Tag: Marina Carr

‘Woman and Scarecrow’ by Marina Carr

February 9th, 2013

Excerpt from Woman and Scarecrow by Marina Carr

Enter the thing in the wardrobe, regal, terrifying, one black wing, cobalt beak, clawed feet, taloned ﬁngers. It is scarecrow, transformed. Stands looking at woman, shakes itself down, woman stares at it.

Scarecrow takes woman’s hand, pierces vein in her wrist, a fountain of blood shoots out. Scarecrow dips quill into woman’s wrist. A cry of pain from Woman.

Woman We don’t belong here. There must be
another Earth. And yet there was a moment when
I thought it might be possible here. A moment
so elusive it’s hardly worth mentioning . . . an
ordinary day with the ordinary sun of a late
Indian summer shining on the grass as I sat in the
car waiting to collect the children from school.
Rusalka on the radio, her song to the moon,
Rusalka pouring her heart out to the moon, her
love for the prince, make me human, she sings,
make me human so I can have him. And something
about the alignment of sun and wind and
song on this most ordinary of afternoons stays
with me, though what it means is beyond me and
what I felt is forgotten now, but the bare facts, me,
the sun, the shivering grass, Rusalka singing to
the moon. And I wonder is this not the prayer
each of us whispers when we pause to consider.
Make me human. Make me human. And then
divine. And I wonder is it for these elusive
prayers we are here, these half sentences that
vanish into the ether almost before we can utter
them. Living is almost nothing and we brave
little mortals investing so much in it.

Scarecrow You’re determined to go with romance on your lips.

Woman I know as well as the next that the arc of
our time here bends to tragedy. How can it be
otherwise when we think where we are going?
But we must mark those moments, those
passionate moments, however small. I looked up
passionate in the dictionary once because I thought
I had never known it. And do you know what passion
means ?

Scarecrow It comes from the Latin, pati, to suffer

Excerpted from *Woman and Scarecrow, published Gallery Press, 2006.

Gallery Press celebrated their 43rd Anniversary in publishing this week of February 2013. Marina Carr is a playwright known to us for the excellence of her work. I was incredibly privileged to witness Marina read from her play Woman and Scarecrow in Galway during Gallery Press’ 40th Anniversary celebrations three years ago. I blogged about Carr’s reading here.

I am interested in how writers use the theatrical-space to create image and symbol, as much as I am interested in how poets use the theatrical-space for poetic works. Gallery Press publish both poetry and drama, thus I wanted to look at Marina Carr’s use of structure and symbol in Woman and Scarecrow. Thank you to Suella from The Gallery Press who has helped me to find the relevant sections of the play, and who has often aided me in the past with regard to permissions for hosting Gallery poets on this blog.

Images from Woman and Scarecrow can be found at the SecretSpaces blog

‘Outside and In’, three women at the Cúirt Literary Festival 2010.

April 25th, 2010

‘Outside and In’ : Three women at the Cúirt literary Festival 2010 .

In truth my visit to the Cúirt festival this year was brief; but I managed to attend the Town Hall Theatre to hear Joyce Carol Oates, Marina Carr (The Gallery Press 40th celebration) and on to Nuala Ní Chonchúir‘s launch of ‘You’ at the Dáil Bar , opposite Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop.

Nuala’s launch epitomised the way Cúirt used be, a pub corner had been requisitioned, a tab run up and Charlie Byrne’s staff brought in boxes of the novel, which the author signed for everyone present (more of that anon).

Joyce Carol Oates read from a New Yorker story called Spiderboy, whilst regaling the audience with tales of worried students who had thought her visit to Galway in the midst of the Volcanic ash crisis comprised a journey into the vortex riven with personal danger and who sought assurances that she would return to teach. She read a long tale about a young boy who had unwittingly procured victims for his senator father. ‘There are places where people just vanish’ , was the response when asked of the father where those boys duct-taped shoes or filthy shirts had gone, after the lost boys had been plied with beer or brought to over 18 clubs. The da had found a way to rid himself of what he considered to be human detritus. It was truly an artful and troubling tale.

Unfortunately Ms Oates did not speak afterward but welcomed meeting and signing in the lobby. Outside , an accident occurred and I watched as a man was intubated at the Franciscan Church, his wife making a wordless tableau of grief; and the hospital but yards away.

A brief interval later; and there ushered in the Luminaries of The Gallery Press, Tom Kilroy, Peter Fallon, Tom French and Marina Carr did brief readings from their plays, poems and works in Progress. Marina terrified me with an image that will stay with me, as a woman lay in her dying, a weird taloned scarecrow emerged from the wardrobe to take account of the Seeker, it drew blood from two wells in the woman’s body to fulfill her obligations to write the life and death of the woman. A midwife scene of such darkness and droll humour that It stays with me indelibly; and advised the Elizabeth Siddall Portrait that graces this page, by Leonard Baskin.

The stage of the Town hall Theatre felt populated with carnival grotesques as Marina’s deep voice rang through the silence of bluish, indigo and the myth took shape under her restrained body-language.

I waited for Kilroy’s Cromwellian work in progress before taking my leave to go to the Dáil Bar where a very warm and friendly gathering of people had arrived to celebrate Nuala’s Ní Chonchúir’s launch of ‘You’.

My inscribed copy formed a gift, so I shall just add a brief description of the wonderful reception, family welcome and lovely kids who played round as Nuala read strongly from her book. Little Juno played with my tickets and programme as soft rain began to fall outside, inside an ambient group enjoyed and bought many copies of the book.

Spiderboy, by Joyce Carol Oates

‘Woman and Scarecrow , Marina Carr.

Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s site

Leonard Baskin’s , ‘Elizabeth Siddall’, from the R.Michelson Gallery catalogue.

Tag: Marina Carr

‘Woman and Scarecrow’ by Marina Carr

‘Outside and In’, three women at the Cúirt Literary Festival 2010.