Marina Carr is an Irish playwright who has written nearly 30 plays. She came to notoriety in the 1990s and is known for writing intense and often dark plays, and for being a particularly prolific and skillful voice in Irish drama. She often writes about human tragedy, and her work often takes its inspiration from classical texts. By the Bog of Cats, from 1998, is perhaps her best known play, and was revived in 2014 in London.
Carr was born in County Offaly to an artistic family and was educated at University College Dublin. Her works include a take on Lorca's Blood Wedding, an adaptation of Anna Karenina, By the Bog of Cats, The Map of Argentina, Phaedra Backwards, Portia Coughlan, The Mai, Ullaloo, This Love Thing, and The Deer Surrender.
Carr often writes about disturbing situations and unsympathetic characters. When a revival of her play On Raftery's Hill received backlash for depicting a scene of incestuous rape, Carr told The Guardian, "The moral police will be the death of art. Political correctness is destroying our literature and our poetry. There is a place for the moral high ground, but it is not art. You can't have the thought police looking over your shoulder when you are writing a play. You have to let the characters have their say. Plays are written with the imagination, not with the head."
By the Bog of Cats is a 1998 play written by Irish playwright Marina Carr. Inspired by the myth of Medea, the play centers around Hester Swane, a heavy-drinking, low-class woman whose lover has left her for another woman. Now, she must face the...
