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  • Austen's Present Future Stagings
  • Christopher Nagle (bio)

Strong arguments can be made that the most innovative, interesting, and rapidly proliferating forms of Austen engagement today are those written for the stage and performed live. While theatrical adaptations of Austen's life and works date to the 1890s, the sheer quantity and variety of twenty-first-century productions are genuinely new and remarkable. Ranging from plays and musicals (professional and amateur), to opera, ballet, and improv comedy, live Austeninspired adaptations both "high" and "low" vastly outnumber the more familiar film and TV incarnations, yet they receive almost no scholarly attention.

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen more than one hundred distinct shows written or performed—mostly new compositions, some new productions of older shows, a few not yet staged—and the last decade has seen an increase in productions overall as well. The majority have circulated through American stages, with approximately 30 percent appearing in other countries: the UK and Australia top that group, while less expected settings include Russia, Sweden, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, and Ireland. Predictably, Pride and Prejudice offshoots dominate, totaling about 35 percent of all Austen-themed productions. The range of source texts is wider than one might guess: all six of the completed novels have seen both straight play and musical adaptation, and Sanditon, The Watsons, Lady Susan, Lesley Castle, and Love and Freindship have been reworked for the [End Page 472] stage as well. Ballet and chamber opera productions are rarer, but one of the latter has toured successfully since 2013, mostly in the UK. Additionally, although they do not focus on texts / scripted performances, at least five different improvisational comedy troupes are dedicated to Austen-themed performances, from England to New England to Los Angeles.

Austen plays currently outnumber musical adaptations by more than three to one. Especially prolific writers include the American Jon Jory, Australian Pamela Whalan, and Brit Tim Luscombe, who have adapted most or all of the finished novels, while two contemporary women playwrights, Lauren Gunderson (collaborating with Margot Melcon) and Kate Hamill, have created the most popular and critically acclaimed work. Celebrated for looser, imaginative retellings, the latter are also two of the most produced playwrights in the United States today. Gunderson's "continuations" include Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, a seasonal crowd-pleaser exploring Mary Bennet's fortunes, and a new holiday sequel devoted to the Wickhams. Hamill's first three of a planned sextet of adaptations feature broad farce, brisk pacing, and fiercely feminist sensibilities that focus on the gender politics beneath Austen's marriage plots. Traditional page-to-stage productions featuring venerable adaptors such as Jory and the duo Joseph Hanreddy and J. R. Sullivan are still frequently staged, and like some revisionist competitors—including Peter Bloedel's A Seussified Pride and Prejudice, produced eleven times in 2018—these plays thrive in school settings and in community and regional theaters; none have received the equivalent of Broadway / West End runs or major national tours yet.

Musicals, however, seem to have potential to move beyond the traditionally limited audiences typical of plays. Pride and Prejudice dominates here, too, with no fewer than nine musicals and three chamber operas performed or in development, more than one-third of the total. Musical adaptations also pose special challenges: standard concerns of compression, omission, and reduction familiar to playwrights are heightened for composers. The form itself calls for amplification at the cost of subtlety, and distinctive nuances of tone crucial to Austen's voice are challenged when characters sacrifice silence and introspection to erupt into song. But what might seem antithetical to the Austen reader has proven fairly successful on stage. Paul Gordon's Emma and Sense and Sensibility and Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs's Austen's Pride have enjoyed multiple stagings to packed houses on both coasts, while the Chicago Chamber Opera's Persuasion has toured for six years to sold-out houses internationally. Loose offshoots continue as well: Amy Heckerling's Clueless, the Musical, Gordon Newman and Tommy Greenberg's [End Page 473] The Single Girl's Guide (Emma set "in the swinging 1960s"), and multiple biographical shows—including several...

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