Women and Scarecrows: Marina Carr’s Stage Bodies

Abstract

This chapter considers the theatre of Marina Carr in the light of the feminist thought of French writers Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, in particular their work on the cultural representations of the feminine-maternal body. Taking the play Woman and Scarecrow as a case-study, the chapter examines Carr’s undermining of the visualist bias of conventional theatre, and demonstrates the extent to which she privileges the auditory in an attempt to confer on the stage a female voice and body.