Jane Austen at the Theatre

Join your fellow Janeites at Marymount Manhattan College on the afternoon of Saturday, June 6th, for our meeting: Jane Austen at the Theatre.

This event is a regional meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) New York Metropolitan Region. Like most of our gatherings, this one is open to JASNA members and non-members alike. If you are not yet a JASNA member, however, we encourage you to join! Learn more on our "about" page here.

The meeting will take place in the Regina Peruggi Room at Marymount Manhattan College, an ADA-accessible venue. Doors open at 1:30 PM; the program begins at 2:00 PM. Please feel free to stick around afterwards for conversation, coffee, tea, and light refreshments (fruit and sweets)!

We'll begin the meeting with a talk by Dr. Claudia Martin of Binghamton University called "'A Young Lady of Spirit Happened to Be at the Playhouse': How Austen's Heroines Evolved from the Theatrics of the Eighteenth-Century Coquette."

"Jane Austen," writes Dr. Martin, "was an avid reader and viewer of plays who likely participated in home theatricals from as early as 1782 when she was seven years old, around the same time she began filling her notebooks with plays, histories, and stories, satirizing and examining women’s social roles and place." This talk draws connections between the "flirtatious performers" on the stage and "the articulate and independent heroines of [Austen's] mature novels who, against all odds, manage to direct the course of their own outcomes."

Our second presentation takes the form of a panel discussion moderated by JASNA-NYM regional co-coordinator Sarah Rose Kearns — and featuring special guests Grace Abele, Jessie Field, and James Martinez Salem, all of whom have written theatrical pieces inspired by Austen's iconic character Charlotte Lucas.

Grace Abele is the author of Charlotte Collins, a new play that imagines the further adventures of Charlotte and her husband after the close of Pride and Prejudice. Jessie Field and James Martinez Salem are the creative team behind Charlotte Lucas is 27 and Not Dead, a new pop-rock musical comedy, in which "unromantic" Charlotte discovers romance with her best friend's sister.

This discussion will feature excerpts from both pieces, performed by Erin Bulman, Peter Giordano, Dani Koenig, Ilana Moskowitz, Austin Reynolds, and Heather Sawyer.

The structured portion of our meeting will wrap up around 4:00, and we expect to be clearing out of Marymount by around 4:45 PM.

If you're in the mood for more literary-theatrical delights, we invite you to grab some dinner in the neighborhood, then meet us again at 59E59, the off-Broadway theatre, for a 7:00 PM performance of Guildford Shakespeare's David Copperfield, complete with discounted tickets and a post-show Q&A.

Guildford Shakespeare is the British theatre company that brought us last year's three-actor Pride and Prejudice (which just received a Drama Desk nomination!). We've been invited to attend this particular performance by our new friends at The Friends of Dickens: use the discount code CHARLES to access Tier 1 seating for $55 (inclusive of fees).

Please note that tickets to David Copperfield must be purchased through the 59E59 box office.

As always, please feel free to email us at jasnany@yahoo.com with any questions.

We look forward to seeing you in June!