Collaborative Project on "Lost Lear" by Dan Colley

 

“Lost Lear” by Dan Colley de Ana María Sánchez Mosquera

"Consumed" by Karis Kelly

 

The Truth will Out: Intergenerational Trauma in 

Karis Kelly’s Consumed

Source here

“Consumed” by Karis Kelly belongs to what has been deemed “New Writing,” a type of contemporary writing characterized by unconventional and fragmented language, confessional in tone, culturally, socially, and politically committed. Karis Kelly has been awarded “The Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2022” for this play.

In her acknowledgements, Karis Kelly draws you into the play and to her voice behind the play. She thanks those who have been with her at the helm of this journey, those who have unlocked something vital in her and made her pursue the dream of putting it down in words. She devotes this play to her mother, to all Northern Irish women, “for your grit, your resilience, your way with words. For your humour, generosity and incredible revolutionary spirit … I am so proud of us, of all the conflicting truths we hold, and the peace we have maintained in this island.”

There we were, we, all, a community of voices, in the reading club, Thursday session, Friday session,  attuned, digging out the meanings, and unlayering the words in an enthusiastic unison of getting to the bone of it. We talked about the layering of many worlds (Petra / Celia /Begoña / Miriam) in the play (political, cultural, social, environmental and feminist issues at stake), the historical moments implied (The Troubles, the famine in Northern Ireland), the many identities intersecting, deranged Gilly (Begoña), their family constellations (Geni) about them venting trauma, hiding trauma, the difficulties of the verbal pyrotechnics of theatre in written word (Eva / Nuria) or the easiness of the swift exchanges (Sandra).

Karis Kelly says in an interview that the play has sprung as a necessity to release intergenerational trauma and catalyse, in a cathartic way, an eating disorder she suffered for many years. She mentions in this interview that Northern Ireland has the highest rate of OCD.

The cover of the book illustrates the four generations through four women’s heads embedded in a puzzle:

“I was created in the womb of the womb of women in Ireland” (Muireann, page 61)

The play begins in a realistic, everyday style, lightened by touches of comedy that soften the tragedy beneath. This gentle bathos establishes the mood for the events to come.

The action is set in Bangor, Ireland, but the space is reduced to a house, a kitchen, and four characters. Props perfectly placed, a gleaming surface of order opens the first scene but havoc unfolds towards the end. The house has a human quality of its own, with its cracks and crevices that mirror the cracks and crevices of these four generations of women (Mónica’s comparison with “The Fall of the House of Usher”)

It is Eileen’s 90th Birthday, but the story is not about a Birthday; it is about the tendrils and the roots that spread and lie hidden. 

Eileen has lived through the Troubles, Irish famine; she was an Ulster Scot who changed her religious beliefs for a bowl of soup (Geni / Sonia / Conchi) and does not understand Muireann’s new world of oversized clothes, and gluten-free meals, which she jokes about, “gluten”... is that German? (Belén).

Gilly is trapped in provincial Bangor, “sacrificed herself” for her daughter-- she has sent her to University in London-- lives in the mind, and suffers from OCD, hoarding stuff. She is constantly doing things not to think. They are both part of what Muireeann (4th generation) will call in the play “the wall of silence in Northern Ireland”. Both mother and daughter, Eileen and Gilly, cannot bear to look at each other. Gilly’s husband is off stage, hanging behind a tetris of cardboard boxes that she has herself collected, suicide. The party must go on, and the man remains in the closet; tragedy unfolds. Gilly’s husband partly materializes the uncomfortable hidden truths that are to be obviated, the corpse in the cellar, which echoes that famous Victorian quote: “skeleton in the closet” (Belén) :

“The phrase first appeared in print in the 1816 issue of The Eclectic Review and was used by writers like William Makepeace Thackeray in The Newcomes to suggest hidden, embarrassing family secrets.”Source: here

All the men in the play are absent; it is only Muireann’s boyfriend who accepts her as she is (Emma).

Jenny (third generation) forgets herself in drinking, resents her mother, Gilly, and is cheated by her husband, Ronnan. Muireann (fourth generation) has an eating disorder, is committed to feminism, environmentalism, and political and social awareness. She bears the Irish name that no one can pronounce, lives in London, and feels astride between two worlds. Her eating disorder turns into a metaphor for all the women in the play: hiding, controlling, stuffing the truth inside…

"You suck everything! Consume everything! All the space! All the air"  (Muireann to Jenny, brought forward by Servando)

She believes that intergenerational trauma is passed on through the genes, one could adduce an expiation move rather than a scientific one (Nuria): 

“It is called epigenetics. In between the genes. All the stuff we can’t see. So—so—so, loads of things can be passed down. But they’ve thought for years that this stuff is genetic. Like, they think that there’s maybe a suicide gene...And, maybe, maybe ...an alcoholism gene”

It is precisely Muireann at the end of the play that drags Eileen to embrace the past, to dig out little Robbie’s corpse below the kitchen table, buried during The Troubles after a bullet passed through his throat. Eileen must get in the mud, enter the hole, and see the past in the eyes:

Muireann: “We have to look at the thing. The thing we all refuse to look at… Come on Granny-leen. They starve. You starve. We starve. Us. It. Them. A change in the genes.The carried shame. It goes on and on forever. Don’t you want to end this? It’s me. It’s me that has to carry it. Please! We can end it. Together. For me.

The play ends in a surrealistic way with the "walls swelling and expanding, the ribcage of the house cracking open, all the wounds now letting light through, the house acquiring a human quality to it (Celia / Servando pointed to this surrealistic tone).

READING PLANNER 2025_2026

READING PLANNER_ BOOKS UP_ 2025_2026_ Ana Sánchez de Ana María Sánchez Mosquera

Chimamanda Adichie by Belén Tizón

THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK-CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHE de Belen T

Begoña Rodríguez on "Alias Grace"

 “Duplicity versus duality” in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace

by Begoña Rodríguez

Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi

“I felt a Cleaving in  my Mind-

As if my Brain had split-

I tried to match it - Seam by Seam-

But could not make it fit” .       

                                                              Emily Dickinson, 1860        

“The true character of the historical Grace Marks remains an enigma,” said Margaret Atwood, and in the novel, as well. The title” Alias Grace” is chosen by the author on purpose. Grace is the name which appears in the newspapers, Penitentiary records, poems..  Even Reverend Verringer refers to her as “the woman known to us as Grace.”  It is the Grace whose identity or, rather, identities are created by “others.” However, the novel begins with the protagonist and narrator's description of the scene preceding Nancy's murder ,of which she has been convicted. She omits details which can incriminate herself, ”This is what I told Dr.Jordan, when we came to that part of the story.”  She is supposed to suffer amnesia. In addition, the narrator / protagonist uses the name and the persona of Mary Whitney, supposedly an old friend dead a long time ago, on several occasions. So, Who is Grace , has the protagonist a split personality , a dual nature? or is it duplicity? 

Clearly, its free indirect style and the variety of narrative techniques, that is to say, quotes from Primary sources, intertextuality, poems, but, above all, the dual narrative contribute to ambiguity. Thus, an unreliable first person narrator in total control of what she wants to tell and an omniscient narrator, when it comes to Simon Jordan, alternate to construct the story of the female protagonist, an Irish immigrant struggling to survive in a hostile world and eventually convicted of double murder and protected by Double Jeopardy. 

From the start, to the public eye is always Grace Marks. However, the name and persona of Mary Whitney ("white water" in Old English) appears several times during her narrative and comes to Grace's rescue twice, both in private circles: when Grace escapes with McDermott and checks in at the tavern as Mary Whitney and, more importantly , during the Neuro-Hypnotic session at the Governor's with her friend Jeremiah, alias Dr.Dupont, leading the show.  So, pretending to be Mary Whitney saves her life …or is she Mary Whitney?

According to Grace´s account, both women had met at Mr. Alderman Parkinson´s and influences her a great deal. Once Mary dies, so we are told, her spirit is not let out and stays “in” Grace, who shortly afterwards leaves the house. It is now that we see her taking decisions for the first time in her life… Who died there? a woman called Mary Whitney or is it a metaphor for the death of the old Grace.? In other words, is it possible to think that Mary Whitney” dies” at that house, presumably after having an abortion, and a new woman is born? Then, Mary Whitney would be Grace´s alter ego…

Obviously, there is an inner metamorphosis. Grace turns into a learned woman. When she is shown round Mr. Kinnear’s house, she sees two paintings hanging in his bedchamber, one of them has a naked woman wearing a peacock-feather fan, the other, of a naked woman taking a bath, depicts the story of the Apocrypha entitled “Susanna and the Elders.” Interestingly enough, both paintings anticipate what is going to happen to her. The eyes of the peacock feathers and the Elders symbolize the media scrutiny, the pressure, the lies about her private life and the false interpretations of different societal forces and patriarchal institutions. Grace goes through all this alone during the trial and after she is found guilty.”What cannot be cured or avoided must be endured,” she says and…she does. Afterwards, she will also have to put up with all kinds of hardships at the Women's Penitentiary and at the Asylum.

In the end, the Committee, whose members are clergymen and gentlemen of standing, files a petition for her acquittal. Also Dr. Jordan, in love with her, needs to believe in her innocence. Her amnesia and dedoublement could explain it all. But she eludes him, she is out of grasp. Indeed, Grace is a literate empowered strong-willed woman who perseveres in her goal . Her Pardon. After looking at herself in the mirror and mentioning all the things being said about her, “how can I be all of those different things at once?”, she has earned the right to give her own version and gain Absolution and she does everything within her power to be released …. it is a world ruled by men, though.

Against all odds, Grace is set free and appears sewing her quilt “The Tree of Paradise.” She decides to stitch in it and embroider around it three pieces of cloth from Mary's petticoat, Nancy's dress and the prison´s nightdress, which represent all the women of the Penitentiary. They are all part of the pattern of her life. Imperfect as it is, she is the one and only owner.