It Lurks in the Saying, Not What\u27s Being Said : Possible Worlds Theory and Gender Performativity in Marina Carr\u27s \u3ci\u3eLow in the Dark\u3c/i\u3e

Low in the Dark by Irish playwright Marina Carr is an absurdist play that focuses heavily on concepts of gender as performance. It does so mainly through role-playing scenes in which two same-gender characters reenact a heterosexual relationship. These scenes can be tied to Marie-Laure Ryan’s conceptions of the four kinds of alternative possible worlds (APWs) within possible worlds theory: fantasy, wish, obligation, and knowledge. An analysis of the play’s role-playing scenes in conjunction with Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory and these four types of APW reveals the constructed-ness of gender norms within the work, which further calls into question a strictly policed gender binary both in the world of the text and our own world