Woman and Scarecrow

2011 & 2012 Tour

A Blood in the Alley Production

Writer: Marina Carr

Woman: Joan Sheehy
Scarecrow: Noelle Brown
Aunti Aah: Geraldine Plunkett
Man: Mark O’Regan

Director: Geoff Gould
Assistant Director: Shane Ward
Sound Designer: Niall Toner
Costume Designer: Liv Monaghan
Production Manager: Michael Lonergan
Stage Manager: Amy Burke
Assistant Stage Manager: Rowan Finken
Company Manager: Jessica Finken
Press and Publicity Officer: Laura Hallissey
Set Construction: Hinrich Finken


Woman and Scarecrow is a dreamy, if sometimes bitter, play about death and the perspective that it can throw upon the life which it is bringing to a close.

On her deathbed a woman with eight children and a remorseful cheating husband surveys her life and imagines what else could have been. Full of bitter humour and brutal honesty this is a fierce, passionate and beautiful lament probing one woman’s attitudes to death and the life that came before it.

“Anyone can get through the first half. You start a life. You finish it. You don’t bail out at the crossroads because you don’t like the scenery.”

Marina Carr’s play Woman and Scarecrow was first performed at the Royal Court in 2006.


Running Time: 90 minutes with interval


Playwright & Cast:

biog_Marina-CarrMarina Carr | Playwright
Born in 1964, Marina Carr was brought up in Co. Offaly. She graduated from University College, Dublin in 1987. Plays for the Abbey Theatre, Dublin include 16 Possible Glimpses, Marble, Ullaloo, The Mai, Portia Coughlan, By the Bog of Cats, Ariel and Meat and Salt. Other plays include Phaedra Backwards (McCarter), On Raftery’s Hill (Druid/Royal Court), Low in the Dark (Project Arts Centre), Woman and Scarecrow (Royal Court), The Cordelia Dream (RSC) and The Giant Blue Hand (The Ark). Marina has been awarded The Puterbaugh Fellowship for 2012 by The University of Oklahoma as part of the Puterbaugh Festival of International Literature and Culture, this year devoted to her work. Other awards include The Macaulay Fellowship, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has also held the Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova.

She was the 1932 fellow at Princeton for 2008. She is an honorary professor at Trinity College Dublin and has just been awarded an honorary doctorate from her alma mater. A member of Aosdána, Marina lives in Kerry with her husband and four children.


 

biog_Joan-SheehyJoan Sheehy | Woman
Joan Sheehy is from Granagh, Co Limerick and has worked with all the leading Irish theatre companies and toured extensively abroad and in Ireland. Joan previously worked with Blood in the Alley on Smallone and other recent work includes Big Maggie (Druid Theatre Co), John Gabriel Borkman (Abbey Theatre and New York), Philadelphia, Here I Come (Second Age) and Last Beauty Spot (Corcadorca)

Appearances with the Abbey Theatre include The Great Hunger, The Gentle Island, The Mai and Yerma. With Druid, Joan has appeared in Carthaginians, The Playboy of the Western World, Conversations on a Homecoming and The Spirit of Annie Ross. Productions with Island Theatre Co include Faith Healer, Pigtown, Where He Lies, Lovers and Less Than a Year. Joan directed Buck Jones and the Body Snatchers (Georgian House, Limerick and Dublin Theatre Festival) – nominated for best production at the Irish Times Theatre Awards. She has also directed Anything But Love and Excess Baggage (Belltable Arts Centre)

Film and T.V work includes, Escape for Virgie, Ros na Run, The Strangers, The Run of the Country, Happy Birthday to Me, The Closer You Get, Marion agus an Bhanprionsa, Trivia, Kilnascully and Mattie.


 

biog_Noelle-BrownNoelle Brown | Scarecrow
Noelle has been a freelance actor since 1987. She has worked extensively in theatre, film, television, and radio. Her theatre work includes Peer Gynt, Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre at the Gate Theatre . Plasticine with Corcadorca, Hamlet with Second Age, Anatomy of a Seagull, Loose Canon, Juno and the Paycock, ART, Listowel Syndrome, Dublin Fringe, Sharon’s Grave, Druid, The Whisperer’s, Rough Magic. She has also toured to Australia and America with the Abbey Theatre appearing in Ghosts and Dancing at Lughnasa. She has played the Kennedy Centre in Washington, and most recently the Irish Arts Centre in New York with Tall Tales production of Bog Boy, by Deirdre Kinihan. She has also directed several plays for Bewley’s Café Theatre, and is currently writing a one-woman show with the support of Fishamble.


 

biog_Geraldine-PlunkettGeraldine Plunkett | Aunti Aah
Geraldine was born in Dublin and started acting in the Abbey Theatre. Over the years she has played in theatres both in Ireland and Internationally. Parts played include Mother in the first production of Tom Murphy’s ‘Famine’ (Peacock Theatre and also RTE television), Juno in ‘Juno and the Paycock’ ( Gate Theatre, Jerusalem Theatre Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Broadway Festival of 20th Century Arts and Olympia Theatre, Dublin). Other plays include ‘The Factory Girls’, ‘Hummen’, ‘The Belle of Amherst’, ‘The House’ (first production, Abbey Theatre 2000), ‘Pilgrims’, Buddlia’, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, ‘Equus’, ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’, ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and ‘True Believers’.

Recent theatre includees ‘Ghost Stories’, ‘Softly Softly Catchee Monkey’, ‘Pinching For My Soul’, ‘The Goddess of Liberty’, John B Keane’s ‘The Matchmaker’ with Mick Lally, ‘Woman and Scarecrow’ (West Cork Fit-up Festival) and Beckett’s ‘Footfalls’, ‘Come and Go’ and ‘Company’. Radio and television includes ‘The Clinic’, ‘Trivia’ and Mary McDermott in ‘Glenroe’. Geraldine is married to actor Peadar Lamb and they have six children and six granddaughters.


 

biog_Mark-O-ReganMark O’Regan | Him
Mark’s previous work at the Abbey Theatre includes The School for Scandal, I Do Not Like Thee Dr Fell, The Plough and the Stars (2002), The Memory of Water, Saint Joan, Juno and the Paycock (1998), The Invisible Mending Company, The Broken Jug, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Chamber Music, The Last Apache Reunion, and A Strange Occurrence on Ireland’s Eye. His most recent work includes The Ghost Show, Art, King UBU, Bleeding Poets, Eejit of Love, Dodgems and Woman and Scarecrow. Other theatre work includes Arcadia, The Old Curiosity Shop, Sweeney Todd, Festen, Fathers and Sons, Sharon’s Grave, Peer Gynt, Three Sisters, The Threepenny Opera, London Assurance, A Christmas Carol, As You Like It and All My Sons (Gate Theatre), Borstal Boy, Translations and The Field (Gaiety Theatre). Mark’s work abroad has taken him to Edinburgh, Japan, New York and Montreal. He has also worked in the Everyman Palace, the Cork Opera House, the Galway Art’s Festival and The Arts Theatre in Belfast. Television credits include Nighthawk, Revenge, Upwardly Mobile and Showbands (RTÉ), Father Ted (Channel 4) and Anytime Now (BBC). Film credits include The Dawning, The Commitments, The Life of Reilly, Black Day at Blackrock, Angela’s Ashes, Into the West, Uncle Bill’s Barrell, The Last of the High Kings, Leap Year and Milo, which will be released in 2012. Mark reviews films on the Marian Finucane Show on RTÉ One and he is a member of the Arts Council.


Dates & Venues:

Woman and Scarecrow was performed in 2012 at these venues:

Mon 3rd – Sat 8th SEPT  | THE EVERYMAN PALACE, CORK | www.everymanpalace.com
Tue 11th – Sat 15th SEPT | THE CIVIC THEATRE, TALLAGHT | www.civictheatre.ie
Wed 19th SEPT | MULLINGAR ARTS THEATRE | www.mullingarartscentre.ie
Thur 20th SEPT | HAWK’S WELL THEATRE, SLIGO | www.hawkswell.com
Sat 22nd SEPT | BELlTABLE LIMERICK | www.belltable.ie
Sun 23rd SEPT | RIVER BANK ARTS CENTRE, NEWBRIDGE | www.rivebank.ie
Tue 25th SEPT | ROSCOMMON ARTS CENTRE | www.roscommonartscentre.ie
Wed 26th & Thur 27th SEPT | THE TOWN HALL THEATRE, GALWAY | tht.ie
Fri 28th SEPT | THE DOCK THEATRE, CARRICK-ON-SHANNON | www.thedock.ie
Thur 4th & Fri 5th OCT | CENTRE CULTURE LIRLANDAIS, PARIS | www.centreculturelirlandais.com


West Cork Fit-up Theatre Festival, 2011

9th August | Community Hall, Ballydehob
10th August | Community Hall, Ballydehob
11th August | Community Hall, Lisavaird
12th August | Community Hall, Sherkinisland
13th August | Rerrin, Bere Island
14th August | Community Hall Goleen


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