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The expression “spring semester” can be slightly misleading for a foreign visitor to Villanova University. Playwright Marina Carr, who holds the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Endowed Chair in Irish studies this semester, discovered that fact when she arrived in time for a merciless cold snap, followed by 20 or so inches of snow piled up around the house she’s living in near the University. She and her two sons, four year-old William and two year-old Daniel, were looked after by their neighbors, Dr. John Immerwahr, vice president for Academic Affairs, and his wife, Kathleen Byrnes, assistant vice president for Student Life. Dr. James Murphy, director of the Irish Studies Program, also dropped by with a “care package” for the three, who were more or less stranded without a car. Carr, who may not have seen that much snow in a lifetime of living in Ireland probably wouldn’t care if she never sees a snowflake again.

In another first, the Villanova Theatre department staged one of her own plays, the highly acclaimed “By the Bog of Cats." Carr deliberately stayed away from the production, leaving it in the hands of Barrymore Award-winning director and Villanova theatre professor Harriet Power. She did, however, attend a run-through.

She has also made a point of not comparing the several productions she has seen in Ireland as well as internationally. “Every production is different,” she remarked recently. “A play is never the way you as the playwright imagine it. The play is out there and it has a life of its own. You have to let it go.” Carr written several other plays, including “The Mai,” “On Raftery’s Hill” and “Portia Coghlan.” Right now, she’s working on a new drama about Anton Chekhov.

Carr is one among of the younger generation of playwrights and like others in the Irish arts scene, she welcomes the strong support of the Irish Arts Council, an independent body attached to the Irish government, which subsidizes by stipend as many as 800 talents in that nation. In addition, there are many one-off grants available and a great deal of private funding, not surprising in a country which has a long tradition of protecting and enhancing its cultural heritage.

As part of her Heimbold duties, Carr is teaching two courses, one a graduate course on playwriting and the other an undergraduate Honors course on modern Irish literary voices. Playwriting is a challenge to teach, even for a playwright. Carr and her students are reading plays and examining their structure or scaffolding, as she calls it. For example, the students are learning how to create monologues and then two-character scenes. Eventually, they’ll work their way up to group scenes. As anyone who has seen the wedding celebration in “By the Bog of Cats” will attest, Carr is a master of this. The undergraduate courses trace the widely diverse works of writers and poets such as W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge, James Joyce, Samuel Becket and others.

Carr’s husband flew over on the weekend of Feb. 22 and the family decided to spend the time in New York City. Naturally, it poured. But she should be used to that. And when spring finally does come, it is hoped that the sight of the Villanova campus in bloom will dispel Carr’s memories of trudging past heaps of days-old snow and ice to take the boys to pre-school in Rosemont before beginning class with future playwrights.