More than 30 years into this gig, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice adapted for the stage. The Regency-era author’s enduring popularity isn’t a mystery: Austen’s novels championed women in an era when women’s options for generating income faced draconian limitations. Unless they were titled, women of Great Britain’s early 1800s couldn’t even inherit property legally. Austen’s work makes the potentially devastating consequences of codified misogyny crystal clear: the line between being unmarried or without means and the hellscape of the workhouse was, as it remains now in so many places, brutally porous.
The tide may be finally shifting; Lifeline Theatre’s September online take on Pride and Prejudice was a marvelously diverse affair. Now comes Pride & Prejudice Productions, which is also scrapping the old unwritten racist rulebook that has historically dictated how the novel should look.
“Austen, Shakespeare, Chekhov—I’m attracted to the Western canon, even though I know that as a femme of color they weren’t written for me as either a character or even as someone in the audience,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times during auditions I heard someone say they hadn’t been all that familiar with Austen because they knew there was nothing in it for them.”
Identity is at the core of Austen’s story of Elizabeth Bennet (Sarah-Lucy Hill, cofounder of Pride & Prejudice Productions, along with J. Michael Wright), her contentious, sexually charged relationship with the monied elite Fitzwilliam Darcy (Dan Lin), and the dire financial consequences she and her four sisters (Stephanie Fongheiser, Capri Campeau, Sophia Ramos, Stephanie Neuerburg) face if they don’t marry.
“Our society helps and rewards people who get married and have children—it incentivizes marriage. Which is great, unless you’re not interested in doing that. It’s the same old misogyny, pure and simple,” Larson said.
Fri-Sat Jan 1-2, 7:30 PM CST, streaming via YouTube and Facebook Live, prideandprejudiceproductions.com, free, but suggested donation of $25.
