ROSY CARRICK

Dr Rosy Carrick is a poet, playwright, actor, translator and stage compere. She gives talks, lectures and performances of her work around the world, and is a leading scholar of the Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

‘Intelligent, articulate & funny… full of warmth and compassion’ The Scotsman

“Sardonically witty and often surreal […] Carrick is the person you wanted to hang around with at school – wry, cool, erudite and a bit ribald” – Speaker’s Corner

“Clever, funny, quarrelsome, querulous, astonishing!” Sabotage

about

Rosy Carrick was born in the north-west of England in 1982.

She has a BA in English and Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and an MA in Critical Theory and Creative Writing from Sussex University. In 2016 she completed a PhD on the Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, also at Sussex University. Her book Volodya: Selected Works of Vladimir Mayakovsky (Enitharmon) was published in 2015, and her new edition of Mayakovsky's epic poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (trans. Dorien Rottenberg, Smokestack) was released in October 2017 to commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution. She is currently working on Dochka, a new translated collection of Mayakovsky’s little-known poetry for children.

As a poet, Rosy has toured the world, while in the UK she has performed at an extensive variety of venues ranging from Bristol Old Vic and the Royal Albert Hall to one section of a three-man tent in a Brighton park. For seven years (until Dec 2015), she ran and compered the Brighton monthly performance poetry event Hammer & Tongue. She is co-host of the Glastonbury Poetry and Words stage and co-curator of the Port Eliot Festival poetry stage. Her debut collection Chokey was published in 2018 by Burnng Eye Books. She is currently working on a second poetry collection, I LOVE.

Rosy’s multi award-winning debut play Passionate Machine premiered at the Brighton and Edinburgh Fringes in 2018 and toured internationally throughout 2019. In 2022, she premiered MuscleBound, a new play about the politics of female pleasure and the eroticised torture of bodybuilders in mainstream films of the 1980s. This show is touring throughout 2024-2025.

Between 2022 and 2024, Rosy joined the multi-award-winning independent game studio ZA/UM, to co-wrote a new title, due for release in 2025.

 Musclebound

ON TOUR 2024

One woman’s quest for tortured beefcake, erotic freedom and raw sexual power!

Confident, provocative and supremely powerful, Rosy Carrick is great at sex. In fact, her onstage career has long been based around her gleeful frankness on the subject. And yet, the sex she’s always been so open about – her sex-life with men – is radically different from Rosy’s earliest and most private erotic fantasies, in which the musclebound heroes of movies like Conan and He-Man are publicly tortured and humiliated by their male antagonists, and where, alone with her imagination, sexual power means something very different. Now, newly single, forty and doling out relationship advice to a teenage daughter on the brink of her own first sexual encounter, Rosy is forced to confront the niggling suspicion that something about her sexual past has never felt quite right. Could reconnecting with the hyper-macho desires of her youth be the key to restoring her sexual power in the present? Or is there a more uncomfortable truth waiting to be reckoned with?

Recounting the hilariously obsessive real-life details of Rosy’s quest for sexual fulfilment alongside frank and intimate conversations with her daughter Olive and candid interviews with her childhood heroes Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dolph Lundgren, Musclebound leaps from the niche fetish of one individual woman into an important and long-overdue exploration of power, performance and the politics of pleasure in heterosexual sex, as Rosy is forced to ask herself: what are the sexual lessons we want to pass on to our daughters – and what do we still need to learn for ourselves?

“A startling, laugh out loud funny and erudite examination of age, relationships and female sexuality ★★★★” – WHAT’S ON STAGE

“Intelligent, thought-provoking and witty – the whole audience was crying with laughter ★★★★”– THE VOICE

“Perfectly poignant and profound... not only does Musclebound drip with Carrick’s charisma and burst with originality, it also presents an honest story of a woman and her adolescent daughter navigating the world of sex and desire” – THE LIST

“Excellent! – ★★★★” – PICK OF THE FRINGE

“Rosy Carrick likes to touch herself – ★★★★” – LONDON THEATRE

“Funny, forthright, clever… a revelatory evening to men and women alike” – GSCENE

Mayakovsky

Rosy Carrick's PhD, Vladimir Mayakovsky: The Language of Revolution, was completed in 2016 at Sussex University, under the supervision of Keston Sutherland. A leading expert in Mayakovsky scholarship, she has given conference papers and lectures on Mayakovsky in English and Russian at conferences around the world, and is committed to bringing his work to new and diverse audiences.

In 2017, to commemorate the centenary of the Russian revolution, Rosy was commissioned to develop a new translation of Mayakovsky's 1918 play Mystery-Bouffe for a free site-specific production across all levels of Waterstones Piccadilly, London.

She is the editor and co-translator of Volodya: Selected Works of Vladimir Mayakovsky, published by Enitharmon Press. For more information and to buy Volodya, click here. Rosy’s new edition of Mayakovsky's epic poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (translated by Dorien Rottenberg) was released in October 2017 with Smokestack Books. For more information and to buy a copy, click here.

 In 2015, Rosy released an audio cd of excerpts from Mayakovsky's 1923 poem About This. Read by Rosy and George Hyde (who is also its co-translator, with Larisa Gureyeva – the granddaughter of General Vyacheslav Molotov), the cd features an original jazz score by Jonathan Lambert. Veronika Krasnova additionally reads parts of the poem in Russian. It can be bought via Amazon or other online places, or through Rosy by emailing rosy@rosycarrick.com. Copies cost £6 each, plus £2 p&p. Click on the link below to check out the first track.

Rosy is currently working on Dochka, a new English-language collection of Mayakovsky’s poems for children.

passionate machine

ON TOUR 2019

winner: Brighton fringe award – best new play 2018

winner: Brighton fringe award – best DESIGN 2018

winner: Infallibles award for theatrical excellence 2018

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Call mum

Everyone writes instructions to their future selves. But what happens if the future starts writing back? Rosy Carrick is about to find out…

Rosy Carrick has to build a time machine – because her future self has already done so and is now stuck 100 years in the past. Given that her knowledge of quantum physics is limited to the works of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rosy must summon the help of science’s greatest minds if she is to rewrite history and save herself…

Darting playfully between multiple narratives, this complex and emotional performance explores the realities of time travel and self-determination – taking in Bowie, motherhood and some most heinous hangovers along the way.

Winner of Brighton Fringe’s Best New Play Award 2018 and The Infallibles Award for Theatrical Excellence at Edinburgh Fringe, Passionate Machine is a hilarious and searingly honest story about obsession, salvation and finding yourself – literally.

‘Playful, engaging, refreshing – ★★★★ ’ The List

‘Surprising, audacious, original. Superb – ★★★★ ’ Edinburghfestival.org

‘A truly fascinating and empowering piece – ★★★★ ’ Broadway World

‘Excellent show – this is fresh writing at its very best’ Fringe Review

‘Intelligent, articulate & funny… an entertaining hour full of warmth and compassion’ The Scotsman

‘Elegant, delightful, heartbreakingly beautiful’ Total Theatre

‘A narrative of obsession with a clever and destabilising time-travelling framework, bags of wit and enormous heart… Carrick has crafted something genuinely one of a kind.’ Exeunt

‘Gorgeously crafted, clever and uplifting, it is a deeply original take on autobiography, unlike anthing I’ve seen before.’ Velvet Box Office

Check out the TOUR TRAILER!

upcoming appearances

gallery

Photo Credits (L-R, T-B): Andre Pattenden; Andre Pattenden; Andre Pattenden; Andre Pattenden; Gilly Smith; Mike Tudor; George Dallimore; Mike Tudor; Andre Pattenden; Darryl Butlin; Trailer Trash; Katariina Jarvinen; Gem Hall; Gem Hall; Gem Hall; Gem Hall; Gem Hall; Peter Target; Ashley Clark; Barry Adamson; Ashley Clark; Andre Pattenden; Ashley Clark; Olive Carrick

contact

 For booking, press & any other inquiries please email Rosy directly at rosy@rosycarrick.com