Staging an Epic Poem for the Twenty-First Century: Marina Carr’s <i>iGirl</i> and the 2021 Abbey Theatre Production

Abstract This article discusses the 2021 Abbey Theatre production of Marina Carr’s monologue play iGirl , which premiered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The play brings together fictitious and historical voices – mostly female – who speak through its only character, Girl (Olwen Fouéré). Adopting the epic genre, it offers a bleak vision of humanity’s past and future. Catherine Fay’s costume, Sinéad Wallace’s lighting, Joanna Parker’s set and video design (the latter with Daniel Denton) emphasise Carr’s focus on marginalised voices but also add a layer of the digital. While the livestreaming of iGirl ’s only dialogical scene, along with the presence of a secluded desk on stage, evokes the recent lockdown, Fouéré’s otherwise nonmediated rhapsodic performance in the physical space of the theatre serves as a counter experience. Both the pandemic context, with a heightened reliance on technology to facilitate communication, and Carr’s gender politics are implied by the play’s title. While a lower-case “i” followed by an upper-case letter evokes the digital and/or the Internet, the play’s first-person narrative style is emphasised when iGirl is read as “I, Girl.” Attributing several monologues to a contemporary “Girl,” whose voice partly overlaps with that of Carr, this article identifies her as the titular iGirl.