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Rhona Trench

BLOODY LIVING
The Loss of Selfhood in the Plays of Marina Carr

Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2010. VIII, 319 pp.
Reimagining Ireland. Vol. 20
Edited by Eamon Maher

ISBN 978-3-03911-964-6 pb.
sFr. 68.– / EUR* 46.30 / EUR** 47.60 / EUR 43.30 / £ 39.– / US-$ 67.95
* includes VAT – only valid for Germany / ** includes VAT – only valid for Austria / EUR does not include VAT

This book deals with the process of negotiation with the past in the present through the plays of Marina Carr. The title frames the work, connoting the path towards destruction and the sense of lethargy acquired along the way. The book offers an in-depth and extensive reading of Carr’s plays. In doing so, it surveys some of the destructive issues represented in the works and provides a series of social and cultural contexts to which the concerns in the works are related.
Carr is best known for her trilogy, “The Mai”, “Portia Coughlan” and “By the Bog of Cats…”, and more recently “Woman and Scarecrow”, “The Cordelia Dream” and “Marble”. The plays are regularly concerned with notions of identity in the context of self-destruction, self-estrangement and displacement. This book applies Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to Carr’s plays in an effort to structure the loss the author identifies in the works. Themes of memory, history and myth are examined in the context of these concerns in provocative and confrontational ways.

Contents:

Unnatural Blood - The Early Plays, “Ullaloo” and “Low in the Dark”, the foundations of abjection, also discussed in “Woman and Scarecrow” – Coagulated Blood, Congealed Blood, Mixed Blood - Abjection and the role of the mother, Cultural memory and history in the context of Carr’s trilogy – The One Blood - Incest – Streaked Blood - Destructive genealogy – Sacrificial Blood – “Ariel”, “The Cordelia Dream” - crossings internalised in corporeal, psychic and abject ways. “Marble” - managing loss, melancholic boundaries of negotiation.

The Author:

Rhona Trench holds a doctorate in Contemporary Irish Theatre from Queen’s University Belfast. She is Programme Chair and teaches on the B.A. in Performing Arts (Hons) at IT Sligo. She was the Symposium Convenor for the Irish Society for Theatre Research Conference 2009. She is currently writing on the practice of the Blue Raincoat Theatre Company, Sligo.

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