'Make me human and then divine': Irish cultural memory, metaphysical transformation, and liminality in six plays by Marina Carr

The drama of Marina Carr interrogates the past in the context of the present. This is particularly timely for an Irish playwright whose work has emerged since the nineteen nineties, a period during which there have been seismic shifts in Irish socio-economic and cultural history. Emigration in twenty-first century Ireland is at an all-time low, immigration is at an all-time high, and Ireland's economy, largely due to the explosion of internet technology, is stronger than it has ever been. The current period is ripe for theatrical exminations of Irish identity, since Irish culture is changing at such an unprecedented pace.;Marina Carr's plays reflect these changes not by ignoring the past, but by holding elements of the past up to the light of the present, interrogating received notions of "Irishness," writing against traditionally accepted versions of domesticity, and simultaneously questioning what is being left behind in the wake of Ireland's march toward the future, at what cost, and to whom.;Carr's characters are in search of their identities, a passionate quest that is linked to three recurring motifs which are the focus of this study: their complicated relationship to the past and to memory; a belief in the supernatural and an otherworldly existence beyond everyday life; and a recurrent liminality. These motifs are studied in the context of six of Carr's plays, written between 1994 and 2006: The Mai (1994), Portia Coughlan (1996), By the Bog of Cats (1998), On Raftery's Hill (2000), Ariel (2002), and Woman and Scarecrow (2006).;Marina Carr uses these motifs in her work to negotiate the past in the present, to point up the consequences of the eradication of the past and the annihilation of those who remember its pain, to interrogate what is means to be "betwixt-and-between" the conflict of Ireland's past and the progress of the future. Hers is a skillful blend of past, present, and future imaginings of Irish cultural identity, and the ways in which her characters navigate the complex and intricate negotiation between states of being.