This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello and welcome to The Drama Book Show!

[0:20] David Rigano: My name is David Rigano.

[0:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And today we are here to talk about The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged.

[0:28] David Rigano: Which, as I mentioned in the last episode, if you're familiar with the Reduced Shakespeare Company and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged, this is such a wonderful sister play.

[0:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It is not an official sister play, but it does act as a great companion piece.

[0:47] David Rigano: And it's just what you would think.

[0:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's really fun, but much in the way The Complete Works of William Shakespeare does too, it gets to the heart of some of these things in a really solid way.

[1:04] David Rigano: Yeah, I love combining stories.

[1:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love Into the Woods. I've done a combined story.

[1:18] David Rigano: And they so clearly, obviously, you have to, but they so clearly have such a love for Jane Austen.

[1:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And not in a like stodgy academic way. Like the real love of it.

[1:34] David Rigano: There's an excitement there.

[1:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. And with their fan base as well.

[1:39] David Rigano: I'm not one who delves into like numbers or stuff like that, but because I've noticed so many of these going across our counter, whenever the authors come in, I always tell them, I'm like, "Oh my God, you have sold blank many copies" because it's really exciting because it is one of our top sellers because people really do come in looking for this show.

[1:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Or I've had people who are very specifically, "I'm looking for something kind of Jane Austen-ish." I'm like, I love that that's a genre, but here we go.

[2:05] David Rigano: Yeah. The first day that these came in, so they were newly published.

[2:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[2:11] David Rigano: And I think it might have been Archer and I were shelving books, and we went, "The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged," like, and of course, you immediately go, okay, I have a frame of reference for what I think this is.

[2:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That sounds so cool.

[2:25] David Rigano: One of the authors happened to come in that day.

[2:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[2:29] David Rigano: And since we saw it and it excited us, we put it right on the new play shelf.

[2:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[2:33] David Rigano: And so the first day that it was on the shelf here at The Drama Book Shop, the author happened to be here and see it on the shelf.

[2:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And when I was walking over and she was there with friends and looking at it and saying something about it, I said, "It just came in today. Doesn't it look so cool?"

[2:50] David Rigano: And she was like, "I wrote it."

[2:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, I do remember that.

[2:54] David Rigano: And that's first of all, that's just exciting. Like anytime an author comes in and sees their stuff on a shelf is really exciting.

[3:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's always fun to see also the interesting approaches some of them have.

[3:03] David Rigano: Aaron Mark was in earlier this week, and he was promo—not promoting—but showing us somebody else's play that I happened to react to it because I wanted to read it.

[3:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I was like, "Oh, I would love to read that."

[3:15] David Rigano: I've seen it on the shelf.

[3:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he's, "Oh, it's a friend of mine," talking about this other playwright.

[3:19] David Rigano: And then as he's leaving, goes, "Oh, by the way, I have some plays here. Would you mind if I signed a couple of them?"

[3:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I'm like, "Yeah, grab your plays." I had no idea who I was talking to.

[3:29] David Rigano: And then he comes back with his plays.

[3:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm like, "Oh my God."

[3:32] David Rigano: In full freak-out mode, and then going down the road from Auto Loca to The Horrors of Dolores Roach, and I was telling him how I write to the score of that show is so gloomy and dark.

[3:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So some of Goat Blood was written while I was listening to that score.

[3:45] David Rigano: And then he was like, "Wait, what's that show?"

[3:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I said Goat Blood.

[3:48] David Rigano: He goes, "I have that show."

[3:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Um, and so we had—and then I was telling him how I have deer on my desk.

[3:51] David Rigano: So we have each other's shows on each other's desks, and you just sit and read it.

[3:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it's exciting because it like he wasn't going to say, "Hey, by the way, I'm so and can I sign my plays?" It was just an afterthought.

[4:00] David Rigano: Or we have authors who will call, and I can clearly see their name on the caller ID calling and asking, "Do we carry books by this person?"

[4:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm like, "I know it's you."

[4:08] David Rigano: Just asking, I'm happy to look for your book.

[4:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it's everyone has like a different approach to it, and everyone has a different reaction.

[4:15] David Rigano: But seeing someone see their stuff for like the first time is so regulars who they come in, they show up at the desk with their arms full of all of their plays.

[4:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I am looking right at you, Adam Simkowa, and they just sit there signing.

[4:29] David Rigano: Yeah, absolutely love it.

[4:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then we have authors who come in and they're like, "Can I, by the way, I'm such and such. Can I sign?"

[4:36] David Rigano: Yeah, my yes, bring all of them.

[4:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then there's others who like Douglas Carter Beane, who I'll chase around the store and be like, "Yeah, I have to sign," or Roberto De Castro, who still hasn't signed, and I ask him every single time.

[4:51] David Rigano: Berto.

[4:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But uh yeah, and I love like we've gotten to know some wonderful—Sarah Ruhl was in who we got to meet doing an event here before we were recording them for podcasts, unfortunately.

[5:03] David Rigano: But she was in here just a couple weeks ago.

[5:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Um, a friend of mine's adapting her poems into a show over at Prospect right now.

[5:11] David Rigano: Yeah, Jay Allen Zimmerman is doing a musical of her poems, and I've been watching the workshop at BMI.

[5:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's really exciting.

[5:19] David Rigano: Yeah, yeah.

[5:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then Liz Duffy Adams was in last week.

[5:22] David Rigano: Definitely.

[5:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And she and I have been connected on Facebook for a little while now, since I put her play as my staff pick, and someone tagged her in it.

[5:31] David Rigano: So she came up to the desk to sign, but she was also like, "David Rigano."

[5:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I saw that happen.

[5:38] David Rigano: And I was reading and I didn't have my glasses on.

[5:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I looked up, I was like, "Yes."

[5:42] David Rigano: And then I put my glasses on.

[5:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was like, "Oh, it's you."

[5:45] David Rigano: I was actually standing a few feet away and staying with some of our coworkers, and they looked over, they're like, "Is that Liz Duffy Adams?"

[5:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like they had that reaction.

[5:52] David Rigano: "Why is she talking to David?"

[5:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Because we're buddies.

[5:56] David Rigano: It's so wonderful to see artists see their work here.

[6:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[6:01] David Rigano: And this was just another one where you could see the excitement there.

[6:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And that's really what started the conversation of yeah, let's do an event.

[6:08] David Rigano: Let's—we already know this is a popular book.

[6:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm already watching it on day one, sell like crazy.

[6:13] David Rigano: So let's make a night of this.

[6:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And they did, they performed and they brought a crowd, and it was exciting.

[6:19] David Rigano: And they—so this is one of those like wonderful kinds of theater pieces where the authors wrote it in a collaborative way.

[6:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: By the way, this is by Jessica Bedford, Catherine McMillan, Charlotte Northeast, and Meghan Winch.

[6:36] David Rigano: So this is four authors coming together to say, okay, you cover Pride and Prejudice, you cover Sense and Sensibility, trying to figure out how they would theatricalize these, what kind of context they would put it in, and then dramaturg each other.

[6:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And some of them were in the original production, one of them directed the original.

[6:59] David Rigano: So it's this kind of like communal way of making theater.

[7:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then they came and did that here for the event.

[7:07] David Rigano: And did the show—not the show, but parts of the show—and showed us what it can be and how fun it was.

[7:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And that was incredible.

[7:15] David Rigano: Including like what the—because they also make fun of themselves as Jane Austen fans.

[7:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And like the fighting over which one's the best.

[7:26] David Rigano: And oh, everybody don't see you can't say Pride and Prejudice, everyone loves Pride, like that kind of stuff.

[7:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But also getting to the heart, as I was saying, of why they love the work.

[7:38] David Rigano: And that's what a good—I don't want to say parody, but at the same time, yeah.

[7:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: With a good idea.

[7:44] David Rigano: It should be loving and it should analyze what it's talking about.

[7:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like it's not just reenacting it, it's talking about it and riffing on it and spoofing it.

[7:54] David Rigano: Yeah.

[7:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[7:55] David Rigano: Let's jump in and let them showcase some of what they did.

[7:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yep.

[8:00] David Rigano: Evening.

[8:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged by Jessica Bedford, Charlotte Northeast, Meghan Winch, and Catherine McMillan.

[8:13] David Rigano: The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged was developed through a series of group meetings over wine and cheese.

[8:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Interspersed with solo writings by the authors starting in the summer of 2018.

[8:24] David Rigano: It received one in-house reading prior to the beginning of rehearsal in May 2019.

[8:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You'll hear excerpts from each of our authors this evening.

[8:32] David Rigano: The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged premiered at the Physic House in Philadelphia on May 29th, 2019, produced by Tiny Dynamite.

[8:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was directed by Catherine McMillan, the scenic and props designer was Sarah Outing.

[8:45] David Rigano: The costume designer was Janice Stefanowitz, the sound designer Daniel Ison, the lighting designer was Michael Lambouy, and the production stage manager was Kat Kelly.

[8:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Minor revisions to the script allowed for a second sold-out run October 30th to November 10th, 2019.

[9:00] David Rigano: Performances once again took place at the Physic House and featured the same director and cast.

[9:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: The cast was as follows.

[9:07] David Rigano: Jessica Bedford.

[9:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Charlotte.

[9:10] David Rigano: Charlotte Northeast.

[9:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Trevor Phail.

[9:13] David Rigano: Read tonight by co-author Meghan Winch.

[9:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Setting.

[9:17] David Rigano: The setting is a historic home.

[9:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Or anything, really.

[9:21] David Rigano: An open room will do.

[9:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But if you can find one with history and some sense of middle-class comforts, or make one on your stage, that's ideal.

[9:30] David Rigano: Scene one.

[9:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Jessica is lounging alone on stage, reading.

[9:36] David Rigano: Charlotte enters, looks around.

[9:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Jessica is absorbed in her book.

[9:42] Charlotte Northeast: Where's Harry?

[9:46] Jessica Bedford: Who?

[9:47] Charlotte Northeast: Harry.

[9:48] Jessica Bedford: Harry Smith.

[9:51] Charlotte Northeast: British actor?

[9:53] Jessica Bedford: Our friend.

[9:54] Charlotte Northeast: He's in The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged.

[9:58] Jessica Bedford: Our play happening now.

[10:01] Charlotte Northeast: Oh, that guy!

[10:03] Jessica Bedford: He's gone.

[10:05] Charlotte Northeast: Gone?

[10:06] Jessica Bedford: What do you mean, gone?

[10:07] Charlotte Northeast: He booked a gig in New York.

[10:09] Jessica Bedford: A six-month contract, three shows and rap or something.

[10:14] Charlotte Northeast: But returns to her book.

[10:16] Jessica Bedford: What do we do?

[10:17] Charlotte Northeast: He was gonna be all the men.

[10:19] Jessica Bedford: I'm not worried about it. A solution will present itself.

[10:23] Charlotte Northeast: Meanwhile, I'll keep working.

[10:25] Jessica Bedford: Respectfully, Charlotte, it doesn't look like you're working.

[10:28] Charlotte Northeast: I'm rereading Pride and Prejudice.

[10:31] Jessica Bedford: I am turning the page on a whole new world.

[10:34] Charlotte Northeast: But we need to solve this Harry crisis.

[10:37] Jessica Bedford: Just as soon as I finish this chapter.

[10:40] Charlotte Northeast: Woo!

[10:42] Jessica Bedford: Another chapter!

[10:44] Charlotte Northeast: People are here.

[10:46] Jessica Bedford: Hiya.

[10:47] Charlotte Northeast: We have to do something.

[10:50] Jessica Bedford: My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.

[10:55] Charlotte Northeast: Okay.

[10:56] Jessica Bedford: Alright, we'll just have to recast the role.

[10:59] Charlotte Northeast: Roles.

[11:00] Jessica Bedford: Oh, Jane Austen's men are all so different.

[11:02] Charlotte Northeast: Darcy, the romantic hero.

[11:04] Jessica Bedford: Bingley, an excitable puppy.

[11:06] Charlotte Northeast: Knightley.

[11:08] Jessica Bedford: Bit of a noge.

[11:09] Charlotte Northeast: Wickham, charming but rakish.

[11:12] Jessica Bedford: Willoughby, charming but rakish.

[11:15] Charlotte Northeast: Frank Churchill.

[11:17] Jessica Bedford: Charming but rakish.

[11:19] Charlotte Northeast: There's a theme emerging there anyway.

[11:22] Trevor: enters in full Regency splendor.

[11:25] Jessica Bedford: Oh, hello.

[11:27] Trevor: We're about to start.

[11:28] Jessica Bedford: Late seating is in the back.

[11:30] Trevor: Enjoys the show.

[11:32] Jessica Bedford: We don't have a show.

[11:34] Trevor: I read in Playbill that you might be looking for a third performer.

[11:37] Jessica Bedford: We didn't post the game in Playbill.

[11:39] Trevor: Yeah, I didn't even know we lost an actor until two minutes ago.

[11:42] Jessica Bedford: I saw Harry's name in a cast listing for a show running in New York, and I know you had this show running here, so I took a chance that you might be looking for a replacement.

[11:51] Trevor: I'm Trevor.

[11:53] Jessica Bedford: I'm a huge Jane Austen fan.

[11:58] Trevor: Is that right?

[12:00] Jessica Bedford: Yep.

[12:01] Trevor: Yes.

[12:03] Jessica Bedford: Yeah.

[12:05] Trevor: I am.

[12:07] Jessica Bedford: Okay, I only know Jane Austen, but I needed the gig.

[12:10] Trevor: Also, I feel awesome in this costume.

[12:14] Jessica Bedford: I'm dashing.

[12:16] Trevor: What do you think, Chuck?

[12:18] Jessica Bedford: What else are we gonna do?

[12:20] Charlotte Northeast: The audience is here.

[12:22] Jessica Bedford: You're in.

[12:24] Jessica Bedford: That one condition. I'm still gonna call you Harry. I'm an actress of a certain age. I only have so much bandwidth. Harry it is. Man, all they gotta do is show up.

[12:36] Charlotte Northeast: Yeah! Some of us have to write our own material to make sure we get cast.

[12:41] Jessica Bedford: They exit. Scene two. Jessica re-enters, followed by Charlotte. They are mid-argument.

[12:46] Charlotte Northeast: You're a populist!

[12:49] Jessica Bedford: And you're a snob!

[12:50] Charlotte Northeast: Or a contrary snob!

[12:52] Jessica Bedford: That is a horrible thing to say to me.

[12:53] Charlotte Northeast: I'm sorry, I only mostly meant it.

[12:58] Jessica Bedford: What seems to be the problem?

[12:59] Charlotte Northeast: Oh, not much, except the same argument we've been having for years.

[13:02] Jessica Bedford: It doesn't have to be.

[13:04] Charlotte Northeast: Just admit that Pride and Prejudice is better than Persuasion, and it's all done.

[13:08] Jessica Bedford: Like a flu shot. One little prick to your pride ego, and we're good to go.

[13:12] Charlotte Northeast: Admit that Pride and Prejudice is better than Persuasion?

[13:16] Jessica Bedford: Never!

[13:17] Charlotte Northeast: It would be a lie.

[13:18] Jessica Bedford: Anne Elliot is more changeable than my underpants.

[13:22] Charlotte Northeast: Lizzie Bennett is an overindulged teenager.

[13:25] Jessica Bedford: Oop.

[13:26] Charlotte Northeast: Anne Elliot thinks before she speaks.

[13:28] Jessica Bedford: And she's an awfully slow thinker.

[13:30] Charlotte Northeast: When does she finally open her mouth?

[13:32] Jessica Bedford: Chapter 30.

[13:34] Charlotte Northeast: It's a novella, and you know that.

[13:38] Jessica Bedford: Lizzie Bennett is quick-witted and sharp.

[13:41] Charlotte Northeast: Lizzie Bennett is snarky and unfair.

[13:43] Jessica Bedford: That's the whole point of the story.

[13:46] Charlotte Northeast: She learns her lesson.

[13:47] Jessica Bedford: She's rewarded for bad behavior, but Persuasion is a love story for Grow Now.

[13:53] Charlotte Northeast: Which means it's boring.

[13:55] Jessica Bedford: I'm a little off.

[13:56] Charlotte Northeast: Excuse you.

[13:57] Jessica Bedford: We're in the middle of an argument.

[13:59] Charlotte Northeast: This is about the core of our souls.

[14:01] Jessica Bedford: The Belt and Chongs on humanity.

[14:03] Charlotte Northeast: What defines decency?

[14:04] Jessica Bedford: Which book is better, Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion?

[14:09] Charlotte Northeast: Great titles.

[14:10] Jessica Bedford: Right?

[14:12] Charlotte Northeast: So which one is better?

[14:14] Jessica Bedford: I don't know then.

[14:16] Charlotte Northeast: Neither of them?

[14:18] Jessica Bedford: Nope.

[14:18] Charlotte Northeast: How about Sense and Sensibility?

[14:20] Jessica Bedford: Oh no.

[14:21] Charlotte Northeast: Emma?

[14:22] Jessica Bedford: I don't think so.

[14:23] Charlotte Northeast: So if you don't know the arguably big hitters, I'm gonna guess you don't know Lady Susan, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey.

[14:30] Jessica Bedford: No, I know that last one. My mom lost it over the Christmas special where Matthew proposed to Lady Mary.

[14:37] Charlotte Northeast: That's Downton Abbey?

[14:40] Jessica Bedford: Oh my god, that seems so amazing.

[14:43] Charlotte Northeast: You have the attention span of a goldfish!

[14:46] Jessica Bedford: Thank you.

[14:46] Charlotte Northeast: No, that was not a compliment.

[14:48] Jessica Bedford: We have a major problem here.

[14:50] Charlotte Northeast: We do?

[14:51] Jessica Bedford: This is The Complete Works of Jane Austen Abridged, and this guy we hired just doesn't know anything.

[14:57] Charlotte Northeast: These people paid money for this.

[15:00] Jessica Bedford: You did?

[15:01] Charlotte Northeast: How much?

[15:02] Jessica Bedford: Hey, look, it's not that big a deal, right?

[15:05] Charlotte Northeast: Come on, we can sort this out.

[15:07] Jessica Bedford: Please, I really need the gig.

[15:09] Charlotte Northeast: Harry can learn on the job.

[15:12] Jessica Bedford: Anyone here not a Jane Austen super fan?

[15:15] Charlotte Northeast: Huh?

[15:16] Jessica Bedford: Yeah?

[15:16] Charlotte Northeast: Okay, so see!

[15:18] Jessica Bedford: Seems only appropriate then, and only two-thirds of us know the stories.

[15:21] Charlotte Northeast: Actually, I envy you.

[15:23] Jessica Bedford: To get to discover Jane for the very first time.

[15:27] Charlotte Northeast: You're gonna love it!

[15:30] Jessica Bedford: Okay, fine. But we'll need to start from scratch.

[15:33] Charlotte Northeast: And let's just start with the basics then.

[15:35] Jessica Bedford: And I mean the basic basics.

[15:38] Charlotte Northeast: Why is Austen so beloved today?

[15:41] Jessica Bedford: Okay. So I did a Wikipedia search, and she was a badass. A popular female voice during a time when patriarchy ruled deeply and ruthlessly.

[15:51] Charlotte Northeast: Do we get into scrolling on his phone?

[15:54] Jessica Bedford: The inheritance laws and land and tales?

[15:57] Charlotte Northeast: Let's keep this to first draft stuff and out one.

[16:00] Jessica Bedford: Right. So, not just a popular voice, a witty voice. A deeply intelligent voice.

[16:05] Charlotte Northeast: Good, this is good. What else?

[16:07] Jessica Bedford: Published six beloved novels, Pride and Prejudice.

[16:10] Charlotte Northeast: Not now.

[16:11] Jessica Bedford: You. Continue.

[16:13] Charlotte Northeast: Also, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.

[16:18] Jessica Bedford: Persuasion is my—

[16:20] Charlotte Northeast: No, not now.

[16:22] Jessica Bedford: You.

[16:23] Charlotte Northeast: Alright.

[16:23] Jessica Bedford: Fine.

[16:25] Charlotte Northeast: And loads else.

[16:27] Jessica Bedford: The wild juvenilia, the unfinished what might have been novel Sanditon and the Watsons.

[16:32] Charlotte Northeast: Oh, the savage Lady Susan, which she finished but left unpublished.

[16:37] Jessica Bedford: A tantalizingly thin biography, 161 letters, one brief and broken engagement, and an early death at 41.

[16:46] Charlotte Northeast: Anything to add to that?

[16:49] Jessica Bedford: Great tits.

[16:52] Charlotte Northeast: Excuse me.

[16:53] Jessica Bedford: Are you saying Jane Austen had great tits?

[16:55] Charlotte Northeast: I don't know. Maybe not.

[16:56] Jessica Bedford: That's exactly my point. She was writing when every woman had great tits.

[17:03] Charlotte Northeast: Dudes!

[17:04] Jessica Bedford: On pure waists!

[17:06] Charlotte Northeast: Everyone had great tits.

[17:07] Jessica Bedford: It was a great equalizing time for women, plus looser corsets so everyone could breathe.

[17:14] Charlotte Northeast: That is not small either.

[17:16] Jessica Bedford: That's why her heroines were all so smart. Oxygen was actually able to circulate to their brains.

[17:23] Charlotte Northeast: That's just science.

[17:24] Jessica Bedford: That's not me.

[17:26] Charlotte Northeast: So you're saying she's beloved because on pure waists gave everyone great tits?

[17:30] Jessica Bedford: Okay, so we picture ourselves as twin spirits to the protagonists, right? Austen writes in third person omniscient.

[17:36] Charlotte Northeast: So you think you're right there, right next to Elizabeth Bennett, like you're her best friend.

[17:41] Jessica Bedford: More of her inner thoughts than Jane, her sister does.

[17:43] Charlotte Northeast: Then her best friend does.

[17:45] Jessica Bedford: And you'll love her, Lizzie, because you see parts of yourself in her.

[17:49] Charlotte Northeast: Or at least you see the way you'd like to be manifested in her.

[17:53] Jessica Bedford: And boom, you find yourself in a rainstorm under a gazebo with the oven table, Mr. Darcy.

[18:00] Charlotte Northeast: That's the Kiera Knightley.

[18:02] Jessica Bedford: That's not in the book.

[18:05] Charlotte Northeast: You find yourself in a rainstorm under a gazebo with Darcy.

[18:09] Jessica Bedford: And he's looking at you all obstinate and hot.

[18:13] Charlotte Northeast: And you think, am I up for this?

[18:17] Jessica Bedford: And then you remember that you can actually breathe, and your tits look fabulous, AF, and you think, yes, I can handle this moment.

[18:28] Charlotte Northeast: Brilliant, you beautiful snob.

[18:32] Jessica Bedford: Jane Austen and omnier waists. The confluence of two great things coming together at the same point in history.

[18:40] Charlotte Northeast: Galileo and the telescope, Robert Hooke and the microscope.

[18:43] Jessica Bedford: Newton and gravity.

[18:47] Charlotte Northeast: You do know that gravity preexisted Newton, right?

[18:50] Jessica Bedford: Potato, potato.

[18:52] Charlotte Northeast: Also, these dresses are half the reason that her stories have been adapted into film.

[18:56] Jessica Bedford: And half the reason that people read the book is because they saw the movie first.

[19:02] Charlotte Northeast: People want to wear those gowns.

[19:06] Jessica Bedford: It's not like the Victorian era.

[19:08] Charlotte Northeast: Nobody is dying to be Jane Eyre.

[19:11] Jessica Bedford: Everybody wants to be Lizzie Bennett.

[19:13] Charlotte Northeast: No one looks good in Victorian clothes.

[19:16] Jessica Bedford: Except for maybe you.

[19:17] Charlotte Northeast: You're tiny like Queen Vicky.

[19:19] Jessica Bedford: Look at your tiny feet.

[19:22] Charlotte Northeast: Let's get back to work, shall we?

[19:24] Jessica Bedford: Her stories were contemporary to her time.

[19:27] Charlotte Northeast: Yes?

[19:27] Jessica Bedford: Yeah.

[19:27] Charlotte Northeast: Great Britain was at war for the bulk of her adult life.

[19:30] Jessica Bedford: And yet her novels never mention war.

[19:32] Charlotte Northeast: No, but they mention soldiers.

[19:35] Jessica Bedford: I remember a time when I liked red coats very much myself.

[19:39] Charlotte Northeast: Yes, but her readers were a people at war with the anxiety of war hanging over their heads.

[19:44] Jessica Bedford: But in her stories, she gives them life in its greatest heights and banalities.

[19:50] Charlotte Northeast: One true love and muddy hems.

[19:53] Jessica Bedford: She reminded them that life was still happening.

[19:55] Charlotte Northeast: Would still happen, despite the constant threat of calamity out there.

[20:01] Jessica Bedford: So an empowered voice, a picture of lives thoroughly lived, and tits.

[20:07] Charlotte Northeast: Amen.

[20:09] Jessica Bedford: The scenes that follow include treatments of Pride and Prejudice with use of a lot of Regency era and unfinished works as movie trailers, a D campaign for Northanger Abbey and a game show Emma.

[20:23] Charlotte Northeast: We move ahead to scene nine.

[20:25] Jessica Bedford: They should narrate in plummy British dialect.

[20:29] Charlotte Northeast: Think Masterpiece Theater.

[20:31] Jessica Bedford: The sisters Dashwood, Elinor, and Marianne were exceedingly handsome.

[20:38] Charlotte Northeast: Not exceedingly wealthy.

[20:49] Trevor: Patriarchy!

[20:51] Jessica Bedford: Trevor, as father, promised me you'll take care of your sisters and stepmother some Charlotte is John.

[20:58] Trevor: Promise me.

[21:00] Jessica Bedford: Okay. Father smiles and dies.

[21:03] Charlotte Northeast: Oh.

[21:04] Trevor: My dearest Fanny.

[21:05] Jessica Bedford: Well, for you are now playing my wife, and that is your name.

[21:08] Trevor: I promised my father I'd look after the girls, for they've no fortune of their own.

[21:11] Jessica Bedford: What say you to giving them three thousand pounds apiece?

[21:14] Charlotte Northeast: Oh, yes, that sounds fair.

[21:16] Trevor: But what if less?

[21:19] Charlotte Northeast: Your argument is sound.

[21:22] Trevor: One thousand.

[21:23] Charlotte Northeast: You are so generous, my love.

[21:25] Trevor: Certainly that will do for them.

[21:27] Charlotte Northeast: Even if it means our own dear little boy will starve.

[21:32] Trevor: How right you are.

[21:33] Charlotte Northeast: Five hundred!

[21:34] Trevor: Four of three!

[21:36] Jessica Bedford: Hearty handshake and for good wishing.

[21:38] Charlotte Northeast: Seems more than your father could reasonably expect.

[21:41] Trevor: Soon!

[21:43] Jessica Bedford: Well, Marianne and their mother could scarcely wait to be gone from the house.

[21:46] Charlotte Northeast: There was one thing making Elinor wish to stay.

[21:49] Jessica Bedford: She was in love with Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars.

[21:52] Trevor: Trevor cuts a dashing figure and tips his cap, ready to play Edward dashingly.

[21:57] Charlotte Northeast: Oh, hold your horses. Here's how Jane Austen describes him.

[22:01] Jessica Bedford: He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing.

[22:09] Trevor: Begrudgingly takes on a painfully shy, shrunken posture, more worm than man.

[22:15] Jessica Bedford: But when his natural shyness was overcome, his behavior gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart.

[22:23] Trevor: Edward smiles a little.

[22:27] Jessica Bedford: Elinor was certain of Edward's feelings.

[22:30] Charlotte Northeast: But as he was terribly shy, and she was prudent and reserved, neither had spoken of it.

[22:35] Jessica Bedford: Elinor and Edward both breeze in as if to speak.

[22:38] Charlotte Northeast: Then look away.

[22:41] Jessica Bedford: And so the sisters Dashwood, Elinor, and Marianne prepare to set off with their mother.

[22:47] Charlotte Northeast: And Peggy.

[22:48] Jessica Bedford: And Margaret.

[22:50] Charlotte Northeast: A third sister who shan't appear in this play because we haven't the people, and she's less important.

[22:55] Jessica Bedford: As I say, they're ready to leave Sussex behind for Devonshire and Barton Cottage, a small house afforded them at a reasonable rent from a distant relation.

[23:04] Charlotte Northeast: Goodbye, Edward.

[23:06] Jessica Bedford: And thank you for the many happy memories.

[23:09] Charlotte Northeast: We shall miss the house.

[23:13] Trevor: With as much feeling as he's capable of displaying.

[23:20] Jessica Bedford: He backs away shyly.

[23:22] Trevor: Never again shall I encounter such pleasing carpets, or a more dear clock, or drapes with such deep feeling, or chairs with such wit, or a happier home.

[23:35] Charlotte Northeast: As long as I live.

[23:37] Trevor: Never, never, never!

[23:39] Jessica Bedford: We only have about seven more minutes to tell the story.

[23:43] Charlotte Northeast: You're so unfair, Caligor!

[23:47] Jessica Bedford: Sorving.

[23:48] Charlotte Northeast: She runs out.

[23:49] Jessica Bedford: Elinor is amused and exits behind her.

[23:51] Charlotte Northeast: All three immediately re-enter with suitcases.

[23:54] Jessica Bedford: As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact.

[23:58] Charlotte Northeast: But as a cottage, it was defective, for the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles.

[24:05] Jessica Bedford: But the women immediately set about making it a home, hanging Elinor's drawings on the walls, and setting up Marianne's piano forte.

[24:13] Charlotte Northeast: One day, Marianne went for a walk, as the sisters were often pleased to do.

[24:17] Jessica Bedford: But when a rainstorm burst overhead, disaster struck.

[24:22] Charlotte Northeast: Marianne falls, her ankle twisted.

[24:24] Jessica Bedford: Whatever shall I do?

[24:26] Charlotte Northeast: Suddenly, out of the rain and fog, a man appeared.

[24:30] Trevor: Trevor sighs, cuts his shy Edward pose.

[24:33] Charlotte Northeast: Oh no, this one's dash it.

[24:35] Jessica Bedford: Oh, yay!

[24:36] Trevor: Cuts a more dashing figure.

[24:37] Jessica Bedford: He helps Marianne up.

[24:39] Trevor: Ladies, forgive my impropriety.

[24:42] Jessica Bedford: He helps Marianne down.

[24:43] Charlotte Northeast: She is already in love.

[24:45] Trevor: I must call on you again tomorrow to see how you're faring.

[24:49] Trevor: My name is Willoughby.

[24:52] Jessica Bedford: Oh, Marianne and Willoughby became fast friends and constant companions until the talk of the village was their certain engagement.

[25:01] Charlotte Northeast: As Charlotte speaks, they do the things she mentions.

[25:04] Trevor: They danced.

[25:05] Charlotte Northeast: They went for long walks and chariot rides.

[25:08] Trevor: They played music and they laughed constantly about everything.

[25:15] Jessica Bedford: And laughing.

[25:17] Trevor: Until one day.

[25:23] Jessica Bedford: Because Arling your master.

[25:25] Trevor: And so Willoughby left.

[25:27] Jessica Bedford: And Marianne.

[25:29] Trevor: He stands with me at that piano forte.

[25:32] Jessica Bedford: And that was his favorite chair.

[25:36] Trevor: And one time that candle went out and he exits.

[25:45] Charlotte Northeast: I too am missing someone.

[25:50] Trevor: And I'm extremely calm about it.

[25:54] Jessica Bedford: Trevor makes the Edward pose.

[25:56] Trevor: Oh, Edward!

[25:57] Jessica Bedford: Oh, I mean, good day, Edward.

[25:59] Trevor: How lovely it is to see you yes, I hello, Ellen all.

[26:03] Jessica Bedford: I'd like to visit for a week.

[26:05] Trevor: Poor you didn't tell us you were coming.

[26:06] Jessica Bedford: No one in these books ever does.

[26:09] Trevor: Edward crossed a lovely week with the Dashwoods, but seemed melancholy, without explanation.

[26:15] Jessica Bedford: That is, until I must go.

[26:17] Trevor: But why?

[26:18] Jessica Bedford: Because I'll sing your master.

[26:20] Trevor: And so the days passed.

[26:26] Trevor: Wondering why Edward's feelings for her now seemed in doubt.

[26:30] Jessica Bedford: You could just ask him, you know.

[26:33] Trevor: As was periodically the case, the Dashwoods' host family had guests.

[26:37] Jessica Bedford: The sisters Steele.

[26:39] Trevor: Lucy Steele was handsome, but lurking underneath her unobjectionable manners was something sinister.

[26:49] Jessica Bedford: I've heard so much about you.

[26:53] Trevor: I must think that I think that you are my newest and best friend.

[26:59] Jessica Bedford: I hear that you love someone by the name of Ferrars.

[27:03] Trevor: How charming that is.

[27:04] Jessica Bedford: It is such a crazy coincidence.

[27:07] Trevor: That I am secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars.

[27:11] Jessica Bedford: Whatever on the holds of such a thing.

[27:13] Trevor: And how wonderful it is that it definitely won't break your heart.

[27:18] Jessica Bedford: That I am going to marry him so hard.

[27:21] Trevor: What are you?

[27:25] Jessica Bedford: Eleanor registers this in her Eleanor way.

[27:28] Trevor: Wait!

[27:31] Jessica Bedford: We forgot to introduce Brandon.

[27:32] Trevor: Oh, whoops.

[27:34] Jessica Bedford: Must we?

[27:35] Trevor: Whichever adopts a Brandon pose.

[27:37] Jessica Bedford: Colonel Brandon.

[27:39] Trevor: Marianne, Marianne Trenned Rand.

[27:40] Jessica Bedford: Hi.

[27:40] Trevor: As Brandon, in love immediately, and in his best, most dramatic Alan Rickman voice.

[27:55] Jessica Bedford: Killer.

[27:55] Trevor: Miss Dolph.

[28:01] Jessica Bedford: The next.

[28:03] Trevor: Moving to the end of this scene, Charlotte and Eleanor and Jessica and Marianne clasp hands in front of Trevor, who shakes his own hand.

[28:11] Jessica Bedford: Everyone becomes themselves again.

[28:13] Trevor: Wait a minute!

[28:14] Jessica Bedford: Jessica and Trevor high five and leave.

[28:17] Trevor: But wait!

[28:18] Jessica Bedford: Charlotte remains.

[28:19] Trevor: There's one more!

[28:21] Jessica Bedford: Scene 10.

[28:23] Trevor: Hi.

[28:25] Jessica Bedford: Gosh.

[28:26] Trevor: Ha ha!

[28:27] Jessica Bedford: We haven't been left alone yet, have we?

[28:29] Trevor: Hi.

[28:29] Jessica Bedford: As you know by now, I'm Charlotte.

[28:32] Trevor: Or Chuck.

[28:33] Jessica Bedford: Great, got that covered.

[28:34] Trevor: And I just know any minute that Jessica and Harry are gonna be right back to help me with this last one.

[28:40] Jessica Bedford: Persuasion, which, if you've been paying attention, and I know y'all have, is my favorite.

[28:46] Trevor: Oh, it wasn't always that way.

[28:48] Jessica Bedford: I love the books, I think, in the order they were written.

[28:51] Trevor: So Northanger, then Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, then Mansfield, Emma, so on.

[28:56] Jessica Bedford: But Persuasion was the book I encountered last.

[29:00] Trevor: So if all the books were a flight of wines, this would be the port.

[29:07] Jessica Bedford: Any minute now.

[29:09] Trevor: They will be back.

[29:14] Jessica Bedford: Okay, plot synopsis.

[29:15] Trevor: Yeah, good suggestion.

[29:16] Jessica Bedford: Um, Anne Elliot, the middle daughter of a baronet who has fallen on hard times, mainly due to his terrible spending habits.

[29:25] Trevor: Now, eight years prior, Anne received a marriage proposal from an earnest young man of no title or fortune, Frederick Wentworth.

[29:34] Jessica Bedford: She was, despite their mutual affection, persuaded to turn him down.

[29:40] Trevor: And so at the age of 27, Anne finds herself with no prospects and a family near financial ruin.

[29:47] Jessica Bedford: The family decides to rent out the ancestral home to recoup their debts and move to Bath.

[29:52] Trevor: The volume is rented to an admiral and his wife, who is the sister of, you guessed it, Frederick Wentworth, now a wealthy naval captain.

[30:04] Jessica Bedford: Anne and Wentworth find themselves once again in each other's orbits, navigating the choppy waters, you see what I did there, of past hurts and revived emotions.

[30:16] Trevor: And through a series of social encounters in which Anne proves herself to be level-headed and steadfast, and a few chance conversations in which Wentworth discovers Anne never recovered from her rejection of him.

[30:31] Jessica Bedford: They eventually achingly reunite.

[30:39] Trevor: And it's gorgeous.

[30:57] Jessica Bedford: And then life slaps you around a bit.

[31:01] Trevor: And you readjust.

[31:03] Jessica Bedford: You lower your expectations, and you don't reach for the stars, and then just when you're ready to accept all that, you encounter true happiness again.

[31:16] Trevor: The awakening of hope.

[31:24] Jessica Bedford: And it speaks of a woman looking at life from the other side of parties, flirtations, and romances to true love and true acceptance.

[31:33] Trevor: Anne and Wentworth were always meant to be together, but it needed to happen at the right time.

[31:38] Jessica Bedford: They had to be ready to accept each other for who they truly were and who they truly loved.

[31:44] Trevor: It's like how I love Persuasion, and Jessica loves Pride and Prejudice.

[31:52] Jessica Bedford: We just have to be ready to accept each other.

[31:57] Trevor: And that is the end of our extra.

[32:15] Jessica Bedford: Thank you.

[32:22] Trevor: Thank you so much for bringing that excerpt in.

[32:26] Jessica Bedford: I know we have some people who joined me.

[32:28] Trevor: We do have some seats around, including two right in the very front row.

[32:35] Jessica Bedford: I'll take a look for that.

[32:39] Trevor: Thank you so much for bringing that in and for bringing this fantastic play in.

[32:45] Jessica Bedford: I definitely need to read Persuasion now.

[32:48] Trevor: Thank you.

[32:49] Jessica Bedford: And my work here is done.

[32:53] Trevor: And I really want to go watch the movie of Sense and Sensibility, but I feel like it's not gonna be quite as entertaining as what I...

[32:53] Jessica Bedford: It's a little different.

[33:04] Trevor: So I wanted to start by just opening this up to all of you.

[33:09] Jessica Bedford: How did this show come about in the first place?

[33:13] Charlotte Northeast: They're all gonna look at me.

[33:13] Jessica Bedford: Well, I took the helm of Tiny Dynamite, who you've heard mentioned a couple times this evening, in 2017.

[33:21] Charlotte Northeast: I'd been working as a freelance director in Philly for many years.

[33:24] Jessica Bedford: I'd been the associate artistic director at a theater, and this company, its founder, was ready to move on.

[33:30] Charlotte Northeast: And so this tiny little company came into my lap.

[33:33] Jessica Bedford: And my first move was to bring Meghan Winch on as my associate artistic director.

[33:39] Charlotte Northeast: This was 2017.

[33:39] Jessica Bedford: And it became a play space, a laboratory for the kinds of things we wanted to explore that didn't necessarily get to do in our freelance work.

[33:48] Charlotte Northeast: And alongside that, I had this title, no more than a title rattling around in my head, The Complete Works of Jane Austen Abridged, an obvious homage to The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged.

[34:01] Charlotte Northeast: I had no idea what to do with it, except that I felt pretty urgently this feels like a good idea, and if I don't do something, someone else in the universe is going to.

[34:09] Jessica Bedford: But I wasn't a playwright.

[34:09] Jessica Bedford: And so with this little company Tiny Dynamite, I approached three of my very dear friends and Janeites I knew all, and we set about in 2018 to write it.

[34:22] Charlotte Northeast: Meghan was not originally on the writing team.

[34:24] Jessica Bedford: She was our dramaturg.

[34:25] Charlotte Northeast: A guy named Harry, who we love, was our fourth author.

[34:30] Jessica Bedford: We struggled a little bit to come up with the form for this piece until one night a couple months in, he called me and he said, "Hey Case, I booked a six-month contract.

[34:41] Charlotte Northeast: I'm gonna be up at Irish Rep in New York until the show premieres."

[34:45] Jessica Bedford: And I woke up in the middle of the night and in the margins of my journal, I wrote the first scene that you heard.

[34:51] Charlotte Northeast: And that became the inviting a new person into the play became the form, and it was really a saving grace.

[34:58] Jessica Bedford: Yeah, it was a catalyst.

[35:00] Charlotte Northeast: And how so you were all Janeites.

[35:05] Jessica Bedford: Had you all read all of them when you started working?

[35:10] Charlotte Northeast: I can say no because I had not.

[35:12] Jessica Bedford: And we pretty quickly decided that actually having a range of experience with Jane's work was useful.

[35:18] Charlotte Northeast: So the ones that I had read I loved and was obsessed with.

[35:21] Jessica Bedford: And for a lot of this, we called digs on the ones that we felt most attached to.

[35:25] Charlotte Northeast: But I hadn't read Northanger, I hadn't read Mansfield.

[35:28] Jessica Bedford: And we just, yeah, we determined pretty quickly that having somebody who could say, "Actually, I don't know what's happening right now.

[35:33] Charlotte Northeast: I don't get that joke" would be useful because while we wrote this as a love letter to Janeites, we also wanted it to be equally welcoming to folks who don't know the books.

[35:41] Jessica Bedford: And I know a little bit more than Trevor does.

[35:46] Charlotte Northeast: Having, of course, read Pride and Prejudice in school, but really not...

[35:46] Jessica Bedford: I mentioned to you all after I worked on a play that had a character who was a Janeite.

[35:56] Charlotte Northeast: So I learned a bit through that, but I've been learning a lot more reading this for my research and then talking to you guys and seeing you perform this.

[36:06] Jessica Bedford: So what was everyone's experience with writing before coming on board this show?

[36:14] Charlotte Northeast: In terms of this piece, one of the things that was helpful was we each truly earnestly had a different favorite.

[36:22] Jessica Bedford: As a playwright film, had I even taken a playwrighting class, maybe as an undergrad.

[36:28] Charlotte Northeast: So we all came to it with different sort of levels of experience.

[36:31] Jessica Bedford: But yeah, I think I was the only produced playwright before we all...

[36:31] Charlotte Northeast: Right, cool.

[36:37] Jessica Bedford: And then as a devised piece, how much of it was created on its feet, and how much of it was like sat down and written?

[36:47] Charlotte Northeast: We had these long sessions like every other week or so where we were generating pages in between and then showing up at somebody's house with wine and cheese and reading it.

[36:59] Jessica Bedford: So like a lot of it was actually written in advance, but written very much like for each other, for our love of each other and stuff like that.

[37:08] Charlotte Northeast: So we all were going away and writing separate bits.

[37:11] Jessica Bedford: We weren't necessarily devising it in the room with each other, but in a weird way because we were all such good friends and we were writing for each other's voices. It was so easy. Yeah, I had never written a play before, but I've directed both of these women and their rhythms, their playful rhythms live in me. Oh, so I can't just go invent a character, but I can write Jessica and I can write Charlotte, you know. And I think too what you mentioned when you were reading our bios, is that all of us have experience in almost every facet, but we all have different, at least at the time of writing, I would say, primary expertise, right? So as we were writing this, you two knew that you were going to be in it.

And so at a certain point you could switch into actor brain and say, Oh, here's what something that would be really fun to play, or here's something I would have a hard time playing. You could switch into director mode and start writing in pictures, and then I in rehearsals could sit back and just watch, right? And be the person who says, Oh, you know what? I think actually seeing this on its feet, we need a transition here. So I think that was a little bit of it too. We had almost all of the raw material, and then once we got into the room and could all put on our other hats. I remember what an hour before our designer run, we completely changed the order of the show. We didn't. I still have that piece of paper where we're like, nope, scene two is now scene twelve.

You're like, and we completely just recalibrated the show, and that's when it was like brrrrr. It just laid into place. But it that was an hour before the design. I'm working on a show that we're doing that right now, so yeah, let's doever in all falls into blade. And you know, it was so beautiful is the germ of that idea came from our costume designer who had worked with all of us and we had a high level of trust. All the collaborators did, and she said, Oh, you take a really long time. Someone who knows that costume designer knows I'm gonna do this presentation right now. You take a really long time getting to the books. Oh, so yeah, with yeah, two weeks into the process, we did a massive reorder. Literally the same conversation I just had on the floor. Sometimes you learn by hearing, yep. And so yeah.

[39:15] Charlotte Northeast: So during the process, did you ever like swap pages and rewrite each other?

[39:24] Jessica Bedford: No, we're like add your own improvements. Oh, yeah, we definitely did that. But it was a lot of what I loved was when we got into the primary writer section, like Pride and Prejudice is all Bedford, right? It's all Jessica, and so we'd always go, and Jessica, like Jessica got the last word on anything P related. And so each writer had a moment where they stepped forward and got that, but it was still a very collaborative effort.

[39:53] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes what would happen is I would pass things off. And I had a half-baked idea. I don't know how to write it. Make and go write it. Well, that was like the part of sharing. Like we had moved our, we had transitioned into director and actors. The end of the play, I wrote the end, and all I got from from these three is make us cry. And then I was late. I had we had a due date on it, and I was late, couldn't think of it. And like your idea, I woke up in the middle of the night and had this idea about a mannequin and dressing Jane, and her voice comes into the room, and it was like this weird magical realism. But it it yeah, we tasked each other, and that really helped get us there.

[40:34] Jessica Bedford: I was gonna say too, and sometimes there are certain things where you're like, oh, I wrote that as a joke just to make you all laugh. I don't want it in the play, but the three of you do. Yeah, hence tits. That the tit scene, right? When we all fell in love with it, we were in my living room. You're like, no, that was just a joke. We're like, no, sorry, it's in play now. Majority go ahead and say, No, it's going in the play. Even tonight, five years later, we were talking about what are we going to read tonight? Like, we're gonna do tits. Yeah, like it's gonna be sorry, love you.

[41:07] Kathryn MacMillan: That speaks to our the approach. I mentioned the complete works of Shakespeare Abridged. And if you know that play, I know many of you do, is those three clowns, they're with all of their properties, like the Bible and the history of America, their approach is these three guys are not up to the task. They don't know what they're doing. And we couldn't steal from them because we couldn't do that because we're deep Jane Austen nerds, so we needed to find a different approach on who these clown versions of these Janeites would be. And so, yeah, that tit scene really speaks to a high and low that we approached a deep reverence. We we want the ghost of Jane Austen to to love and appreciate our love for her, but we're also modern idiots and live in the 21st century. And so I yeah, that it feels very at the heart of our tone. And I think when I was reading it, that's a scene that kind of goes, oh, okay, I know what kind of play where it's like.

[42:06] Jessica Bedford: Yeah, yeah, and and we found that in production. You that you'd have these people would come in costume. Like show up in full regions of regalia. And it's super cool. And they'd quote the books with us, so don't screw up the quotes. Then when we got to that scene, that was like the tent pole, like y'all were on this ride. And most of the time they went with us.

[42:25] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah. It's a great way of saying it's fine if this is the thing that brought you the Jane Austen, and it's fine if this is the thing. Whatever you are here for, whatever brought you here, you're good.

[42:38] Jessica Bedford: Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to see you.

[42:40] Kathryn MacMillan: Certainly.

[42:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Back to the process, Casey. Were you staging at all during the writing process?

[42:49] Casey: Were you what was the writing process also a rehearsal process?

[42:53] Jessica Bedford: No. No, I hear a play first, which is fairly unusual for a director. I'm the text is always very alive for me. So sure, absolutely was I doing directorial work in the writing process, but it was all auditory. So I was like, ooh, give me a beat right there, or ooh, the rhythm of this joke, can you cut that? Like that kind of stuff was happening. But the staging really happened when we got in the rehearsal room and the place where we premiered it, which was a historic home, the producer version of me at Tiny Dynamite, who needed to make back some cash, basically sold chairs so that we were playing the whole thing in a like teeny time corner, and then director me regretted that the whole time. But we did we yeah, there were limitations that proved to be part of the making of it, I would say, in a good way.

[43:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I do want to open this up to all in attendance as well. If you have any questions for our creators, if you don't yet, that's fine. I have more. But yes. Is there anyone else in the room who would do one of the production?

[44:05] Shannon Michael Wamser: Stand up, Shannon Michael Wamser.

[44:10] Jessica Bedford: Shannon Michael Wamser stepped in into our Connecticut production. We did a Playhouse on Park and is forever our Trevor now. So yeah, we're glad you're here. Thank you.

[44:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Really quickly, I have a question for everyone here. Who here has seen this play?

[44:29] Audience member: Okay, nice.

[44:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And who here just showed up because you're a Janeite?

[44:36] Audience member: Yes!

[44:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We love it. All right, real quick poll. Favorite book.

[44:46] Audience member: Yeah, that's two.

[44:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So yeah, really good books. So who's for persuasion?

[44:51] Audience member: Okay.

[44:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Who's for Pride Prejudice?

[44:58] Audience member: Who has only read Pride and Prejudice in high school and nothing else?

[45:01] Audience member: No, that's fine.

[45:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No shame. Sense and Sensibility.

[45:06] Audience member: Emma.

[45:08] Audience member: Okay.

[45:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No thank you. Good here has only seen or read the Kate Hamill adaptations of that.

[45:17] Audience member: But you're available here at the trouble.

[45:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Good. I actually have not. Jane Austen playwright in our midst, too. Who's here?

[45:25] Audience member: Yay.

[45:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Are you published?

[45:33] Audience member: Okay, let's get your stuff here.

[45:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, I actually I've not made it to any of Kate Hamill's Jane Austen stuff yet.

[45:42] Audience member: Yet.

[45:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But I've read some for some time. I'm a big fan. So is anyone else coming?

[45:46] Audience member: Yes.

[45:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Can you say a little bit more about the process of figuring out how you wanted to present Jane Austen?

[45:54] Audience member: Like the sort of take on her and her work that you chose to focus on.

[45:58] Jessica Bedford: One thing that I appreciate about this piece as a super nerdy Jane who was literally wearing Regency gown last time I saw this show. I love that the focus is on the humor and the feminist political consciousness, which are two of the, I think, along with romance are the triumvirate of things people love about Jane. But the romance one obviously gets a little bit more play in popular culture. And yeah, I just wonder how you approached that or whether you gave thought to the representation of the work.

[46:31] Jessica Bedford: I'll say that in as I was writing it, or really actually earlier then, maybe just before, I had just read Jane Austen's Secret Radical. Yeah. And so that was like so primary on my mind about like you know, her politics and the way that her politics are in her writing. And like I feel like it's one of those things that like like Pandora's box got open for me, and once I saw into it, I couldn't not see it. So I don't think I could have written it in any other way than her politics and her feminism and things like that.

[47:01] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah. I was really informed by the demands of the form we had chosen. The complete works abridged, has its own urgency, and I think it pops up in in a lot of our writing. The shorthand of someone who loves and honors the source material so much we can also point out its absurdities in respectful way. I think that's a button we push quite often. Like, no, like no one in these books have a does. There are a lot of a lot of the humor across which we sail is based on knowing her so well and being raudacious enough to be like, I know you girl. And a lot of these early wine and cheese meetings weren't even about necessarily putting words on paper. They were just us chatting about why we love her and what speaks to us. And so we think a lot of those conversations then coalesced into, as you say, our sort of take on one of the things we really want to talk. We want other people to have this conversation as well.

[47:56] Jessica Bedford: It there's a scene in particular where we talk about the crossover of nerd cultures. Yes. And so we take a moment to celebrate nerd culture and not just Janeite culture, but like Trekkies and D people, and just anybody who's a fan of a thing and has found a community. We really zoned in on that, and so everybody feels seen in whatever hobby they have or in whatever community they've chosen, and it's okay and it's cool. And Jane broke that open, and now everybody has their place and their community. And so that that was a unifying theme as well, I think.

[48:31] Kathryn MacMillan: And what was like saying, Oh, this one's gonna be DMD, this one's gonna be the DC was that found in meetings all together, or was there like go away?

[48:43] Jessica Bedford: I brought in this idea, it might be weird, it might be stupid, it might be really. I wrote Northanger Abbey, and I was like, it's so gothic, and there's ghosts and nonsense, and I was like, Well, what treatment could I give it? And D went broop, and I was like, Okay, and so there's a there's usually a beautiful moment in production where there's that there's like a group of people who feel so seen. They're they're like, because D D just comes into the we literally play D D in the scene, and it I don't know, I had known nothing about D D. My son plays it, but that to me felt uh an accessible way to break open this gothic novel in a way that 21st century brains could comprehend. And so that to me felt the right treatment.

[49:24] Kathryn MacMillan: But do you ever get the opposite?

[49:25] Jessica Bedford: Oh, oh, we've had we've had some Jesus. I didn't get the D D section. I'm like, well, that's all you then. I'm like, they're the people who are seen. Did you ever get say something and have people be like, oh, oh, I don't think so.

[49:36] Charlotte Northeast: No, no, but about our favorite novels. Sometimes I had a patron after a performance once just absolutely like side-eye and cold shoulder me about the way that the character Jessica talked about Mansfield Park. I was like, oh, it was it's a play, and I actually have much respect for that story. And yeah, so like about stuff like that, yeah.

[49:58] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah, we joke about how nobody likes Mansfield, and so it gets a defensive.

[50:04] Charlotte Northeast: No, I love it. It's one of my favorites. We just need to keep things moving.

[50:08] Kathryn MacMillan: We did though.

[50:10] Charlotte Northeast: Oh no. I was gonna say that we almost got that. Except you're not so originally we were gonna keep it to just the six big novels, right? And then I went to a Jane Austen Society of North America meeting to hand out postcards and talk about the show. And I was sitting at the table, and I mentioned something to the people I was sitting with, and she went, Oh, great, so what are you doing about Lady Susan and the juvenilia? And I said, Oh, yeah, we're just gonna keep it to the big six novels, actually. She went, Oh, okay, so it's the incomplete works of Jane Austen. And I came back to the writers the next day and I was like, so we're gonna be writing something about Lady Susan and the juvenilia. And we did, we put a two-minute scene in, but we've got to be a good one.

[50:54] Jessica Bedford: Yeah, a truth of the theater is that time is our medium compared to photography as a camera and or paints, or time is our medium. And so, yeah, the juvenilia gets a two-minute movie trailer scene, and Pride and Prejudice gets 20 minutes because we did talk about like where does the weight of these novels of these works live for us.

[51:17] Charlotte Northeast: And yeah, so we're very aware of where we gift our time.

[51:22] Audience member: Yeah, and we have a question here.

[51:25] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah, so I know you all went into this as devotees and fans and aficionados, but I'm curious what the process illuminated for you about Jane's work that maybe you didn't know going in, or you didn't realize you like that a conclusion you hadn't come to at the beginning that was revealed to you over the process of writing it.

[51:46] Jessica Bedford: That's a great question. I think it's like all classical writers, right? We put them on pedestals. Shakespeare was just he wanted a paycheck. He stole, he borrowed books, he did whatever he needed to do to get a paycheck. And I'm not saying Jane did that, but like she was a real person. And I think we put these writers on pedestals and we forget that they were humans and they were flawed and they had great senses of humor. And for me, she came alive in a very human way. And as I've gotten into more of the Janeite community, and we talk about the flaws in her writing, that she didn't address some of the more thorny issues that happened during her lifetime, or she did, but in very different ways. To me, she just became a human being who happened to be incredibly gifted at writing, and so that was a huge revelation for me.

[52:33] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah, yeah, which is why it feels so important to like bring her into the room at the end of the play.

[52:38] Charlotte Northeast: Yeah, yeah.

[52:40] Kathryn MacMillan: So obviously, in the play, Trevor is there to be the eyes of any significant other who got dragged along with that film.

[52:54] Jessica Bedford: The dads. So you've touched on this a little bit, saying that letting the gaps in your own knowledge be present in the room to make sure that you could fill in those gaps for anyone. But how did you go about devising the character of Trevor? Now, what did you have the actor on board before you started writing?

[53:19] Kathryn MacMillan: Okay. So basically, how did you go about devising the character of Trevor so that he could be the eyes for anyone in the audience who didn't really know?

[53:29] Jessica Bedford: Yeah. The real Trevor had some dramaturgical value because he too was a real newbie to the world of Jane Austen. A thing I do have some slight beef with because he had played Mr. Elton in a production of Emma for me. Um somehow still remained ignorant of the so there were some moments where you'd be like, what's happening here? And we had to dig back into the writing. Um but even just knowing he was not involved, he came in for rehearsals and was around for a reading or two, but just having him in our mind, having a oh, this person doesn't know was real useful. And someone with I think an openness and an enthusiasm to learning was something that I think was really helpful as we were developing the character, and knowing that we had Trevor, who is a very sweet and enthusiastic person who's open to, okay, I don't know about it, teach me, please. I think was a useful tone for us to have to play with.

[54:23] Charlotte Northeast: And someone now, we do not include in our character descriptions that Trevor is younger than Charlotte and Jessica, but ours was in real life, and I think it that also brought some issues of feminism and ageism and the treatment of women like to the fore that you know a lot of Jane Austen's novels are about young women, and here we are, women with life experience embodying them. And I so I think we straddle the line between sort of the point of view of Jane the writer who knows things but has some snark, and the point of view of young women discovering themselves and finding friendships and falling in love.

[55:03] Kathryn MacMillan: So, yeah, the writing lives on many levels. It our knowledge with which we embody and the way we create jokes for the Janeites, and then come along with a little punch lines behind, like a cleanup to anyone who doesn't have. So if you're looking around because there's some Janeite members doubled over, oh, the little follow-up joke is about to come and let you know what's going on so you can enjoy it too. That became a real important part of what we wanted to build.

[55:29] Jessica Bedford: And I enjoyed Trevor's commentary as he learns when the hat makes him say something in private.

[55:39] Charlotte Northeast: Yeah, and then he takes off a hat and he goes, Whoa! Dude, I hope she doesn't I hope she doesn't respond favorably to that. To get that kind of visceral reaction in the moment, I really appreciate it.

[55:52] Kathryn MacMillan: Do we have any more questions from yes?

[55:55] Audience member: So taking Philip, where else I just say, or will it play?

[56:01] Kathryn MacMillan: We're in a neat moment where we're releasing it into the world. It's published, which means Sam French is really in charge now of who does it. We've done several productions, and now there are productions starting to happen that we have nothing to do with. A few of us will be heading over to the UK this spring or in the fall. There is a tour of a UK company, Schoolhouse Productions, I think they are, that is doing a UK tour, and it feels like we tricked them. I'm like, Americans. People of England? We're a bunch of Americans.

[56:34] Jessica Bedford: Yeah.

[56:34] Kathryn MacMillan: I'm my husband and I, who's the guy who asked that question? Not a plant.

[56:44] Jessica Bedford: And this is oh, yes.

[56:46] Kathryn MacMillan: And there's a production happening this summer in Maine. Have there been any productions that have happened since that you've been able, or they're just starting to happen? Have you been able to go see any?

[56:58] Jessica Bedford: I haven't been able to see reading a couple of things. There was a reading in Maryland. We couldn't get to, there was a production in Iowa. Yeah, we were still in the process. But yeah, I don't none of us have gotten to see it.

[57:10] Kathryn MacMillan: Okay. All right. Thank you very much because that was my closer before.

[57:16] Audience member: What do you hope for the future of this play?

[57:24] Kathryn MacMillan: Obviously, aside from it being done in every school amateur regional theater in America, the UK, the world, and sending lots of money to you. You know what? I think it's what we just had at the end of the excerpt that people go home and read Persuasion or PP or any of her work. Go home and read it or and then crack open all of Jane Austen's works. I think that's a noble goal.

[57:48] Jessica Bedford: I was doing a writing residency just while we were actually mid-writing process, and I had to go to this one class that was called something of the Western Canon. I don't even remember. And the fusty old professor started it with this course is not gonna cover anything trivial, anything marriage plot material. And he said, And so that's Jane Austen. And I was there with a friend who like put her arm on me. And like the dismissiveness that just because these plays deal with the reality of womanhood, and my blood boiled.

[58:23] Kathryn MacMillan: And so honestly, what to echo Charlotte's point, what I hope is that this play has a long life, and that somebody goes, Oh my god, this writer's a badass. I want to read Persuasion.

[58:34] Charlotte Northeast: Yeah, yeah.

[58:35] Kathryn MacMillan: You heard it here first, folks.

[58:37] Jessica Bedford: You said Persuasion.

[58:38] Charlotte Northeast: I like all of them.

[58:40] Kathryn MacMillan: I like all of them.

[58:41] Jessica Bedford: Are we surprised?

[58:43] Charlotte Northeast: It was a plot point.

[58:47] Kathryn MacMillan: That was a laugh minute. It was it was just fun.

[58:49] Jessica Bedford: And it was fun watching the audience just uh and it was I said this to them, but it was so great for them to have a character who was the non-Jane Austen fan.

[59:03] Kathryn MacMillan: Do you need that to feel like you have space in this show?

[59:07] Jessica Bedford: Yeah, or the casual Jane Austen fan who had to read Pride and Prejudice in high school, but doesn't know the canon the way that they do. They made you feel comfortable in there and they made you feel like they were holding your hand a little bit when you needed it.

[59:23] Kathryn MacMillan: Exactly. You need those that way into the art.

[59:25] Jessica Bedford: Yeah, otherwise it just you're not including all of your audience.

[59:32] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah, yeah.

[59:34] Jessica Bedford: And this is such a welcoming way to say you're gonna it's fine.

[59:41] Kathryn MacMillan: Jane Austen is fun.

[59:42] Jessica Bedford: Yes, Jane Austen is more relevant than maybe you think she is.

[59:45] Kathryn MacMillan: And I think that's the thing is you hear the name and automatically think, okay, this isn't for me. This is and you think of the you think of the Regency clothes and you think of how like pretty but how buttoned up everyone looks exactly and not like what her commentary on like women in society and marriage as a construct and what she was saying for her time with all of that that we can still bring into and that's what it is showcasing what stories were that can be you that that are effective today.

[1:00:23] Jessica Bedford: Yeah, and especially when you come today and when you're saying like oh, and again, I'm showing off that like Pride and Prejudice is the only one that I like really know. But when you're like, so Lizzie Bennett is like totally calling going on a Mr. Darcy, and she's like when you're you can say everything that's going on in a very like modern way.

[1:00:44] Kathryn MacMillan: I was about to say like a Clueless kind of way, but that's not even modern anymore.

[1:00:48] Jessica Bedford: But that is based on Jane Austen. But it's something that people can easily reach though, too.

[1:00:53] Kathryn MacMillan: Yeah, it's yeah, it's the light reading version of it.

[1:00:57] Jessica Bedford: Yes, speaking of light reading.

[1:00:59] Kathryn MacMillan: And if you like reading about lights, our next episode is what is lighting a genealogy of people and ideas.

[1:01:10] Jessica Bedford: So we're gonna jump into that and lighten up your life in our very next episode.

[1:01:14] Kathryn MacMillan: But until then, don't forget to subscribe to Drama Book Show Podcast on Instagram. Please subscribe to the Drama Book Shop on Eventbrite so that you can be notified whenever we add in-person events to our calendar. Give us some reviews or some comments on whichever streaming platform you're listening to because it does help. And remember that all the books we talk about can be found here at the Drama Bookshop. And so can we.

[1:01:36] Jessica Bedford: And we will see you at the bookshop.