It's been well over 200 years since Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" was published. The novel remains as popular as at any time in the past 213 years. TheatreSquared is bringing Elizabeth and the other Bennetts, Mr. Darcy and George Wickham to their stage through May 10. The play is co-adapted by Bob Ford and Amy Herzberg and co-directed by Herzberg and Shana Gold. Last week, Bob Ford and Shana Gold came to the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio. They say they both know the work is beloved by many. Gold says it's one of her favorite books.
Gold: For me, it's just such a delightful piece of literature, and it's also really thrilling that it's written by a woman at a time where there weren't a lot of female novelists. And it's romantic, but it's also social satire. It's witty, but it's also incredibly heartfelt. Some people might think this is a stretch, but I think like Shakespeare, it has that feeling that it really gives you everything — the multiplicity of interior life and exterior excitement, because there is a certain even suspenseful aspect to it. And so it's just a really good yarn, but it's also got this incredible narrative that helps us understand what's going on with our leading lady. And she's a really intellectually exciting, witty human being. And honestly, there's not that many aspects of classic literature that gives us — we have the Brontës and we have Jane Austen. But Jane Austen is 250 years old this year, and it stays as modern feeling as it ever did.
Kellams: I want to come back to that in a minute, because I agree. What does it take to adapt?
Ford: Well, you need to read the book. And I realized — admission — we decided to adapt this play before either of us had read the book. We know the great BBC miniseries. Of course we watched the Keira Knightley movie. So I feel like I know the story really well, and I also feel like I know Jane Austen really well because of all those great adaptations, but have never read any of her novels. And so we said, let's adapt this. It fit in the season a lot of other ways. Then I read the book. We'd already announced what we were doing and I was like, oh my God, a lot of hubris. You start with a lot of hubris because you think, oh, the characters are there, the storylines, the plots are there. That's the hard part. The rest is going to be easy. And no — because when I read the book, I immediately thought of Shakespeare. I think that's the analogy. She has that level of genius. It blew my mind. And then I thought, first of all, I'm in a lot of trouble. But then I also thought, oh man, I get to collaborate and play in the sandbox with this genius.
Kellams: And so there are so many great lines of dialogue. Is it tough — if you're going to have a production that you want people out before midnight — to go, this has to go, this can't stay.
Gold: How did you know?
Ford: Yeah, it's really tough. But it's the double-edged sword because on one side, oh great, we've got amazing lines. We also have amazing lines that the Austenites, the aficionados out there will have a lot of fun with. They're not just Easter eggs — they're giant gifts. And Shana also weighed in, because Shana jumped in really early into this idea of co-directing, partly out of her passion for Austen. She had the deep bench of knowledge of Jane Austen. And she said, these are the lines that have to be in this play.
Gold: I don't know if I said "have to" — I said, these are the gems, these are the jewels. And I think I could sort of speak for the Austenites in the crowd. And in some ways, I think it's a superpower of our production and adaptation that I, who practically have the novel memorized, and then two really brilliant artists and minds, who are fresh to the book — that's really nice for the audience, I think, because we're going to have a lot of people out there who are in the camp of having read it at least once, some many times, and then others who are brand new to it or just saw an adaptation 10 years ago and barely remember it. So I really feel like we are able to be inclusive in this production of wherever you come from around this classic tale.
Kellams: Tell me about the cast.
Ford: We have a wonderful cast. We figured out that we could do this show that has about 25 or so key characters, primary and secondary, and we figured out a way to do it with 13 actors. At first it was 12 actors, and then I went back to my partner Shannon Jones and said, can we add another actor? We really need one more actor before you have to start cutting away material that you really don't want to lose. When we decided to do this show, I've been watching Amy Herzberg's MFA acting class — this one group of seven going through three years together — and over a year ago already saw how they could fit in this show. "Pride and Prejudice" is filled with twenty-somethings, or late teens and twenty-somethings, which is a perfect age. And we've been wanting to collaborate with the university fully like this for a long time. So we proposed that we collaborate, make this more or less a co-production, and that we will use all seven of those graduate students. We also have a delightful undergraduate who plays Lydia, the youngest sister, and they are phenomenal. We auditioned nationally for what we think of as the leads — Lizzie Bennet and Darcy. And the two graduate students who are playing those roles basically won those auditions on a national level. It's been delightful because they also know each other so well, and they love each other. And you just sense that coming off the stage as well. And then we have two long-time alums in the show — Courtney Sanders, and Jason Shipman, who plays Collins, this wonderful serio-comic character. And then two lovely newcomers to TheatreSquared. One of Amy's grad students, Marjorie Gast, plays three different young women.
Kellams: When you're directing someone who's going to portray three distinct characters, what's that like? Or is it just like working with three different actors?
Gold: In some ways it is, in that I always try to help them find as much clarity and reality for each character, even if it's really small. I don't enjoy seeing cartoonish caricatures just because it's a one-off. So we really develop each character equally, even if it's a small role. And of course the actors are doing a lot of the work themselves, because they've been trained by Amy Herzberg, my co-director. They are coming to the table with so much of that work done. But yes, we are working with them to find distinctions without pushing the distinctions, because that's where some of those overly broad characterizations can come in, when people are worried that the audience won't know the difference. So finding strong, clear distinctions that are still really authentic and feel true and in the world of the play.
Shana Gold is co-director of "Pride and Prejudice." Bob Ford is co-adaptor of the TheatreSquared production of Jane Austen's novel. Amy Herzberg is both co-adaptor and co-director. Shana Gold and Bob Ford were in our studio last week. TheatreSquared's production is a collaboration with the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences Department of Theatre at the University of Arkansas.
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