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THE WORKS PRESENTS: MARINA CARR

The Works Presents: Marina Carr Image Name: The Works Presents: Marina Carr Description: The Works Presents: Marina Carr John Kelly and Marina Carr Copyright: RTÉ

THE WORKS PRESENTS: MARINA CARR

The Works Presents continues with its 10-part series in which John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of film, literature, music, theatre and the visual arts.

In the eighth episode of the series, John talks with renowned Irish playwright, Marina Carr, famed for her dramatic character driven plays. Her work, such as ‘By the Bog of Cats’ and ‘On Raftery’s Hill’, have been performed all over the world to critical and commercial acclaim.

From her earliest absurdist plays to her recent adaptations of classic stories, Marina has touched on the darkest elements of human kind but always imbued them with an Irish humour.

Raised in rural Co. Offaly, Marina’s work is often written in the strong Midland dialect of her home county. Her ability to transfer the particular rhythms of this language to the stage has helped to embed her work with a unique and songlike cadence.

While her home has helped to shape the language of her plays, it is her fascination with the Greek tragedies that have given her work their powerful nature. Using tragic female characters such as Medea and Electra as inspiration, Marina has created a host of powerful female roles. Often raging at the world around them, her characters, although committing brutal acts, are decidedly human.

Marina explains to John that although her characters do commit immoral acts, she is convinced that this is the reality of the world we are living in. She questions why the public can be shocked by things on the stage when they happen in real life.

Never one to take the easy road, Marina has branched out into new areas of work, such as her ‘first real job’ as an English lecturer at Dublin City University, to writing children’s plays and even to writing opera.

Her new adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel, Anna Karenina, opens at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on Wednesday 7th December.