Writing from the margins: Marina Carr's early theatre

Abstract

This article analyses Marina Carr's first four plays: Low in the Dark (1989), The Deer's Surrender (1990), This Love Thing (1991) and Ullaloo (1991). It aims to show how Carr seeks to eschew the mimetic conventions of what can be seen as a dominant, patriarchal theatre establishment, marking (and possibly maintaining) her marginal position as a theatre-maker at the time. I argue that Carr, at this point in her career, was engaged in distinctly feminist theatre practices. Materialist feminist discourse provides a useful framework for understanding what the emergent dramatist was trying to achieve and the meaningful possibilities of her work. A study of this phase of Carr's career, encompassing all four works preceding The Mai, has not been offered in research on the dramatist to date. In addition to expanding the history of feminist theatre practice in Ireland, it promotes an enriched understanding of Carr's theatre as a whole.

Keywords::

• Marina Carr
• Irish drama
• devised theatre
• feminist performance practices
• Irish women playwrights
• gender and performance

Notes

^1.Colgan, “‘Low in the Dark.’”

^2. Ibid.

^3.Nowlan, “Kind of Satire.”

^4. Ibid.

^5. Colgan and Nowlan, mentioned above, had established themselves as prominent critics, writing regularly on theatre for the Irish Times. Other male critics writing for national broadsheets echoed the patronising tone of Colgan and Nowlan. According to Brian Brennan of The Sunday Independent, Ullaloo's “visual gimmickry seems not only unnecessary but downright unproductive”. Meanwhile, Desmond Rush contends in the Irish Independent that Carr “has yet to find a formula worthy of her gifts. The vehicle she uses in Ullaloo has its own alienation factor, and is unoriginal.” Brennan and Rush are cited in Sweeney, Performing the Body, 189.

^6.Mac Intyre, “Ullaloo.”

^7. For example: Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa,” 883; Dolan, Feminist Spectator, 35–40. Dolan has since revised some of these views. Although she once problematised commercially successful, realist theatre as much for its links to capitalism as its style and content, she now admits that this work may have “helped, rather than hindered, feminist progress”. See “Feminist Performance Criticism,” 434.

^8.Keating, “New Meanings.”

^9.Carr, “Backwards and Forwards.”

^10.Mac Intyre, “The Mai,” 75.

^11.Doyle, “Dead Centre,” 41.

^12.Murphy, “Staging Histories,” 389.

^13.Wallace, “‘Crossroads between Worlds,’” 87.

^14. The first and, at this stage, only published essay collection on Carr is The Theatre of Marina Carr: “before rules was made,” edited by Cathy Leeney and Anna McMullan (2003). This compilation exemplifies how commercial and critical success has steered research towards The Mai, Portia Coughlan and By the Bog of Cats …. In terms of Carr's work prior to The Mai, the collection offers only one article: an autobiographical reflection from actress Sarahjane Scaife, focusing mainly on her experience of playing Binder during Low in the Dark's premiere run at the Project Arts Centre in 1989.

^15.Sihra, “House of Woman,” 206.

^16. Sweeney, Performing the Body, 193, 186.

^17.Trench, Bloody Living, 29–94.

^18. Carr qtd in Sihra, “House of Woman,” 203.

^19. Trench, Bloody Living, 28.

^20.Lonergan, “Carr, Marina (1964–),” 228.

^21. The receipt for the sale of Carr's notes is included in box 1/6 with This Love Thing, MS ACC4891, at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

^22. A recent work of feminist scholarship on women's contributions to Irish theatre is Women in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation (2009), edited by Melissa Sihra. Cathy Leeney has also been involved in recent efforts to acknowledge women playwrights, as part of the editorial team for the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Volume 4–5: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions (2002), which includes a section on female dramatists, and Seen and Heard (2001), a volume of woman-authored plays.

^23.Pilkington argues for a revisionist approach to Irish theatre that would challenge the assumption that Irish theatre history begins with the establishment of the Irish National Theatre Society. He contends that the Irish canon as it stands excludes rural theatrical traditions such as mumming and folk drama. See “Theatre History.” There has been much discussion regarding the marginalisation or absence of female playwrights in Ireland. See, for example, McMullan's “Gender, Authorship and Performance” or O'Dwyer's “Imagination of Women's Reality.” Both McMullan and Pilkington refer to the Irish canon's universalising approach, directed towards an ideal spectator and promoting an ideal, homogeneous response.

^24.Scaife, “Mutual Beginnings,” 6.

^25.White, “Straight from the Arts,” 12.

^26.Fitz-Simon, “Winkling On,” 15.

^27. MS ACC4891 1/6, National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

^28.Jordan, “Introduction,” xii.

^29. See Jürs-Munby, “Introduction,” 1–2.

^30.McIvor, “Witnessing the (Broken) Nation,” 39. See also Fitzgerald, Outburst of Frankness. Here, Fitzgerald collates responses from artists and practitioners who work in community contexts and regularly employ devised performance methods. The forthcoming essay collection Devised Performance in Irish Theatre: Histories and Contemporary Practices, edited by McIvor and O'Gorman, seeks to expand on Fitzgerald's work.

^31. Scaife, “Mutual Beginnings,” 8.

^32.Dolan, “Gender Impersonation Onstage,” 10.

^33.Carr, “Interview with Marina Carr,” 53.

^34.Modern Drama 32, no. 1 (1989) is a special issue on “Women in Theatre.” The entire issue provides a useful introduction to this “school of thought”, which concerned a feminist quest for subversive, political theatre. Jeanie Forte's essay “Realism, Narrative and the Feminist Playwright” is published here. Forte discusses Kennedy's The Owl Answers (1965), arguing that while the unique form of this play satisfies the quest for a feminist aesthetic, the fact that it is rarely produced impedes its political potential. This issue of Modern Drama also includes Reinelt's essay “Feminist Theory and the Problem of Performance,” 48–57. Here, Reinelt lauds Churchill's Cloud Nine (1979) and Top Girls (1982) as “tours de force of [… Churchill's] deconstructive phase” (52).

^35. Dolan, Feminist Spectator, 83–97.

^36. Ibid., 101.

^37. Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa,” 879.

^38. Ibid.

^39.Dolan, “Utopia in Performance,” 164.

^40.Butler, “Global Violence, Sexual Politics,” 208.

^41. These ideas are collated in Dolan's 2005 monograph Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater.

^42. Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa,” 886.

^43. Ibid., 881.

^44.Ullaloo,2–3. All quotations are from the typescript, TS MS 36, 099/3/8, National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

^45.Ullaloo, 5.

^46. Ibid., 1.

^47.Butler, Gender Trouble, xv.

^48.Ullaloo, 26.

^49. Ibid., 14.

^50. See “Constitution of Ireland.” The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 1986 proposed to amend the Constitution of Ireland by removing the prohibition on divorce. The proposal was rejected in the 1986 referendum. Divorce was finally signed into law on 17 June 1996, after The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution Act, 1995, was approved by referendum on 24 November 1995. This deleted article 41.3.2, which stated that “No law shall be enacted providing for the grant of a dissolution of marriage.” It allowed for the substitution of a new article 41.3.2, allowing divorce in certain circumstances. The criteria decree that spouses must have lived apart for at least four of the previous five years of marriage and that there is no prospect of reconciliation. The final count revealed 50.3% in favour of ending the ban on divorce and 49.7% opposed to the change. For results of Irish referendums, see Took and Donnelly's “Elections Ireland.”

^51. Trench, Bloody Living, 59.

^52. Millie, The Mai's daughter, functions as both adult narrator and child participant in the action of the play. She tells us that after Robert left “The Mai set about looking for that magic thread that would stitch us together again and she found it at Owl Lake, the most coveted site in the country.” See The Mai, 111.

^53.Ullaloo, 12.

^54. Ibid., 11.

^55. Dolan, Utopia, 8.

^56. See, for example, Sihra's “‘Nature Noble or Ignoble’” and “Renegotiating Landscapes.”

^57. For more on the structure, management and theatre-making strategies of women's theatre groups internationally see Aston, Introduction to Feminism, 58–62.

^58.White, “Glasshouse,” 42–3.

^59. Scaife, “Mutual Beginnings,” 4–5.

^60. Sweeney, Performing the Body, 171; Scaife, “Mutual Beginnings,” 5.

^61. Scaife, “Mutual Beginnings,” 2.

^62.West, “Pigsback,” 21.

^63. Scaife, “Mutual Beginnings,” 5.

^64. Sihra, “House of Woman,” 203.

^65.Low in the Dark, 10.

^66. Sweeney, Performing the Body, 178–9. As Sweeney discusses, in 1983, the addition of the Eight Amendment to the Irish constitution explicitly forbade abortion under any circumstances and, ironically, was followed by a number of high-profile scandals concerning women whose pregnancies could be seen to contribute to their tragic deaths.

^67.The Mai, 182.

^68.Portia Coughlan, 221.

^69. Mrs Kilbride repeatedly refers to her granddaughter Josie as a “bastard” throughout the fourth scene of By the Bog of Cats …

^70.Low in the Dark, 5.

^71. Ibid., 16.

^72.Aston, Introduction to Feminism, 47.

^73. Here, I am invoking the title of Judith Butler's 2004 monograph Undoing Gender.

^74.Low in the Dark, 16.

^75.Butler, “Performative Acts,” 157.

^76. “Performances: Belief in the Part One is Playing” is the first chapter of Goffman's seminal 1959 volume The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, 17–24.

^77. Butler, “Performative Acts,” 155.

^78. Sweeney, Performing the Body, 175.

^79.Low in the Dark, 15.

^80. Butler, “Performative Acts,” 156.

^81. McMullan points out that, “items of clothing such as pink socks become signifiers of gender which can be exchanged between male and female characters.” See “Gender,” 43.

^82.Low in the Dark, 23.

^83. Butler, “Performative Acts,” 155.

^84. All quotations from This Love Thing are taken from the manuscript, ACC4891 1/6, held at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

^85. Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa,” 875.

^86.O'Gorman, “Art My Goddess …,” 21.

^87. “This Love Thing,” PlayographyIreland, http://www.irishplayography.com/play.aspx?playid = 29 (accessed January 10, 2014).

^88. See, for example, Dolan's Feminist Spectator (106–14). Reinelt has engaged in significant research on the influence of Brecht in British feminist theatre, incorporated as part of her 1996 monograph After Brecht.

^89. Dolan, Feminist Spectator, 101.

^90. All quotations from The Deer's Surrender are taken from the manuscript, ACC4891 2/6, held at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

^91.The Mai, 147.

^92. Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa,” 881.

^93.Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 105.

^94. Dolan, Feminist Spectator, 83–97.

^95. Cixous, “Laugh of Medusa,” 889.

^96. For a discussion of feminism and Lacan, see Aston, Introduction to Feminism, 35–8.

^97. Dolan, Feminist Spectator, 101–3; Aston, Introduction to Feminism, 48–9.

^98.Diamond, “Mimesis, Mimicry and the True Real,” 67.

^99. Ibid., 58–60.

^100. Dolan, Feminist Spectator, 19.

^101. Carr, “Interview with Marina Carr,” 56.

^102. Colgan, “‘Low in the Dark.’”

^103. Carr, “Interview with Marina Carr,” 56.

^104. Ibid.

^105. White, “Straight from the Arts,” 12.

^106.Carr, “Dealing with the Dead,” 190.

^107. Lonergan, “Carr, Marina (1964–),” 228.

^108. For convincing arguments on the subversive potential of Carr's Midlands plays, see Sihra's “‘Nature Noble or Ignoble’” and “Renegotiating Landscapes,” as well as the introduction to The Theatre of Marina Carr: “before rules was made,” written by the collection's editors Leeney and McMullan.