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Marina Carr (born 1964) is an Irish playwright. Born in Tullamore, County Offaly, Carr grew up in a household filled with literature. Both of her parents were writers: her father was a novelist and a playwright and her mother was a poet and a teacher. As a child, she read children's versions of Greek myths. These myths turned out to be major influences in many of her later works. One of her favorite myths, Medea, was used as an inspiration for her play ''By the Bog of Cats''. Carr's mother died when she was just 17, influencing her future works such as "By the Bog of Cats," where the main character, Hester, experienced a very similar tragedy. Carr attended University College Dublin, studying English and philosophy. She graduated in 1987. She recently received a honorary degree of Doctorate of Literature from her alma mater. She has held posts as writer-in-residence at the Abbey Theatre, Trinity College Dublin, and Princeton University. She served as Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2003 and a professor of Irish studies at Villanova University. She has written 16 plays since her career began, and is considered one of Ireland’s most prominent playwrights. Her award-winning plays—largely poetic tragedies of rural Irish domestic life—have been produced around the world. She currently lives in Kerry and is a member of Aosdána. Her works have been translated into French, German, and Norwegian. Like the works of several other contemporary Irish playwrights, Carr's plays frequently include instances of black humor and severe physical brutality. She is distinguished, however, most notably by the fact that several of her plays are filled with classical Greek allusion or are loose retellings of classical Greek myths. In Carr's early work, Carr experiments with style as she seeks to find her own. ''Low in the Dark'' (1989), her first play, is an absurdist piece in which gender roles and misconceptions are farcically addressed. The style reflects her early interest in fellow Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Carr's next few experiments are ''The Deer Surrender'' (1990), ''This Love Thing'' (1991), and ''Ullaloo'' (1991). She won the 1997 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her following play, ''The Mai'' (1994), won Best New Play from the Dublin Theatre Festival and marked a shift in Carr's writing style. Though it is not an adaptation of a Greek play, it has distinct classical resonances, rising from questions of truth, legacy/heredity, and fate. The same can be said of her next play, ''Portia Coughlan'' (1996). Her other works include ''By the Bog of Cats…'' (1998), a retelling of Euripides' ''Medea''; ''On Raftery's Hill'' (2000); ''Ariel'' (2002), a retelling of Euripides Iphigenia at Aulis'' extended into the aftermath shown in Aeschylus' Oresteia; and ''Woman and Scarecrow'' (2006). In correlation with Greek, supernatural, and mystical themes that frequently resonate in Marina Carr’s writing, her playwright, By the Bog of Cats, succeeds in creating a dramatic and twisted story in only a few pages. The drama is filled with several deceiving apparitions that contribute to the eccentricity of the storyline; including the Ghost Fancier and main character, Hester’s late brother. On the surface the common theme throughout Carr’s writing seems to be Greek myth. It began with her play, The Mai (1994) is not complete a retelling of a Greek myth, but has strong connections to the story of Electra, told by Sophocles and Euripides. Her following play, Portia Coughlan (1996) also has ties to Greek themes, although it is less directly related to one story. By the Bog of Cats (1998) was a direct retelling of the Medea Myth (Euripides), complete with a strong, but fatal female character and the tragedy which becomes her. The theme continued with Carr’s play Ariel (2002), an adaptation of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis. However if we take a deeper look the surpassing theme is powerful women. Carr regularly casts women from these famous tragedies as the protagonist in her own playwrights, but reviving the betrayal, desperation, and revenge in a more modern style focusing on the female aspect. Although Carr is not a feminist, her plays bolster femininity and defy previous thoughts of weak women into ones of strength. Typically Greek myths contain female characters, however they are never the principal character and males are behaviorally more dominant. Though, in Carr’s By the Bog of Cats, a retelling of the famous Medea Myth, we see a complete flip side to this approach where Carr casts the main character is a fierce and empowered woman. Main character Hester Swane, an Irish Traveller, attempts to cope with her life of consistent abandonment by going to extreme lengths to regain the people who have already discarded her. Through many desperate attempts to reclaim her ex-fiancé and father of her seven-year-old daughter, Carthage Killbride, she succeeds in further turning the backs of her fellow citizens on her, making her appear as a mad and delusional woman. However, Hester does not succumb to the ruthlessness of her neighbors and proceeds in an extreme act of self-sacrifice for not only herself by her daughter, rejecting a path of further isolation and loneliness. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Marina Carr」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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