A sinister night. Evil and edge in the air. What are they celebrating? Clytemnestra's world is torn apart when Agamemnon sacrifices their daughter for the sake of war. Ten years later, the couple are reunited. What follows is a dangerous battle fuelled by love, grief and power. Marina Carr's adaptation of the infamous Greek myth brings Clytemnestra's story to the fore and asks if it is possible to forgive the unforgivable. He turns to me in hall one evening, wine on him, sentimental. There is nothing I would not do to have your good opinion again, he says. Girl on an Altar opened at the Kiln Theatre, London, in May 2022.

A bride promised. A blood vow broken. The vengeance of a village released. I want you green. Green wind, green branches. Boat on the ocean. Horse on the mountain. Written in the summer of 1932 with the Spanish civil war looming, Lorca's anarchic meditation on the fate of the individual versus society is a prophetic foreshadowing of the violence that would soon tear his beloved country apart and lead to his own tragic end. The mysteries of love and hate are explored against the backdrop of a community gearing up to unleash these elemental forces upon itself, with unstoppable consequences. What is done cannot be undone. Marina Carr's version of Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding premiered at the Young Vic, London, in September 2019.

Set in the mysterious landscape of the bogs of rural Ireland, Carr's lyrical and timeless play tells the story of Hester Swane, an Irish traveller with a deep and unearthly connection to her land. Tormented by the memory of a mother who deserted her, Hester is once again betrayed, this time by the father of her child, the man she loves. On the brink of despair, she embarks on a terrible journey of vengeance as the secrets of her tangled history are revealed. 'A piece of poetic realism steeped in the past... Carr has an extraordinary ability to move between the mythic and the real.' Guardian 'A great play... a great work of poetry... the word should soon carry across both sides of the Atlantic.' Independent By the Bog of Cats premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1998. It was revived at Wyndham's Theatre, London, in November 2004.

This third richly varied collection of plays by Marina Carr was published to coincide with the Royal Shakespeare Company's premiere of Hecuba at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in September 2015. Sixteen Possible Glimpses imagines sixteen fleeting moments in Anton Chekhov's short life and work. Phaedra Backwards retells the Phaedra myth to discover what shaped her. The Map of Argentina offers a meditation on love and what happens when it is denied, or pursued and hunted down. Hecuba was written in reaction to the bad press this Trojan queen receives, and reimagines how she may have suffered and reacted. Indigo is a dark and passionate romance amongst fairies, demons, ghouls and every sort of fantastic creature out of folklore and myth.

Marina Carr: Plays 1 introduces the work of a major new voice in playwrighting. Carr has been praised for the beauty and uniqueness of her language, was cited by The Independent as "a hugely valuable dramatic voice," and has even been compared to Eugene O'Neill. A prominent voice in British letters who has been building momentum in the United States for the past decade, Carr's four critically acclaimed works are gathered together here for the first time.

On Raftery's Hill 'This is a play that howls to be seen; its courage is matched only by its dramatic power.' Sunday Independent Ariel 'An astonishing piece of theatre. Interweaving themes drawn from Irish, Greek and biblical myth, she spins a tale of power that is honest, emotional, dark and true . . . Die to see it.' Irish Examiner Woman and Scarecrow 'Drama doesn't come much richer or stranger than this death-bed lament. Ravishing in its dense, literary language, it is as visceral as it is intellectual. It lingers not only in the ear and brain, but in the imagination and the gut. An extraordinary brew, bittersweet and totally intoxicating.' The Times The Cordelia Dream 'A brave piece and clearly charged with deep feeling. . . This is certainly unsettling territory and Carr boldly goes for it.' Financial Times Marble 'An extraordinary play that lures us in with a promise of the recognisable only to drag us screaming into the soaring, magnificent possibilities of love and the destruction that it wreaks.' Irish Independent

A woman - gaunt and ill, haggard after giving birth eight times - faces death. What was life? What was love? What else could have been? Full of mordant, bitter humour, this is a passionate threnody from one of Ireland's leading playwrights. Woman and Scarecrow premieres at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2006.

I Neanderthal Prince of the Plains I saw Eden It wasn't much I saw The tree The gates Rusty But still Intact I saw The triple lock The jack boot The size of an oak I retreated Wisely God they Were Ugly Marina Carr's iGirl premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in October 2021.

2016 marks the centenary of the Easter Rising, known as "the poets' rebellion", for among their leaders were university scholars of English, history and Irish. The ill-fated revolt lasted six days and ended ignominiously with the rebels rounded up and their leaders sentenced to death. The signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic must have known that the Rising would be crushed, must have dreaded the carnage and death, must have foreseen that, if caught alive, they would themselves be executed. Between 3 and 12 May 1916, the seven signatories were among those executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol. Now 100 years later, eight of Ireland's finest writers remember these revolutionaries in a unique theatre performance. The forgotten figure of Elizabeth O'Farrell - the nurse who delivered the rebels' surrender to the British - is also given a voice. Signatories comprises the artistic responses of Emma Donoghue, Thomas Kilroy, Hugo Hamilton, Frank McGuinness, Rachel Fehily, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Marina Carr and Joseph O'Connor to the seven signatories and Nurse O'Farrell.They portray the emotional struggle in this ground-breaking theatrical and literary commemoration of Ireland's turbulent past. A performance introduction on the staging of the play is given by Director Patrick Mason, and an introduction by Lucy Collins, School of English, Drama and Film, UCD, sets the historical context of the play.

Vronsky What were you thinking about with your head stuck to the watering can? Anna Oh, the same, always the same. I was thinking about my happiness and about my unhappiness. Russia is changing. Rules have been broken. Chaos is looming. Families are falling apart. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is an examination of a country in the midst of extraordinary change. Through the impact of one woman's decision, it looks at the troubling cost of love on the human soul. Marina Carr brings a new perspective to Anna Karenina in her stage adaptation of this epic love story, which opened at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in December 2016.