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Irish playwright Marina Carr named to
Heimbold Endowed Chair in Irish Studies
Maureen McKew
University to present her award-winning
play, "By the Bog of Cats."
Villanova University has named Irish playwright
Marina Carr to hold the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Endowed Chair in Irish
Studies for the spring 2003 semester. In addition, the University Theatre
is presenting Carr's 1998 play, "By the Bog of Cats," from Feb. 11 through
Feb. 23.
"By the Bog of Cats" is a retelling of
the Medea tragedy. An Irish traveler named Hester Swane has turned her
back on her gypsy heritage and settled down near a swamp called the Bog
of Cats. Tormented by her mother's desertion and some dark family secrets,
she despairs when she is abandoned by the man she loves. She is forced
to give up her own child and leave the only home she has ever known.
During her semester at Villanova, Carr
will teach a graduate course on playwriting along with an undergraduate
course titled "Modern Irish Voices." She also will give a reading with
poet and former Heimbold Chair holder Peter Fallon. This is scheduled
for Tuesday, April 1 at 8 p.m. at the Connelly Center Cinema. Admission
will be free and open to the public.
Carr is a graduate of University College
Dublin and already has had eight plays produced, many by Dublin's Gate,
Peacock and Abbey theatres. Many of her plays have been staged in England,
Scandinavia, Germany and the United States. "Raftery's Hill" was produced
at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and at the Royal Court
Theatre in London.
Carr has won The Irish Times best
play award for "The Bog of Cats" and the E.M. Forster Prize from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. She was writer in residence at the Abbey
Theatre in 1995, at Trinity College 1998-1999, and at Dublin City University
1999-2000. |
