SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Co-produced with the Atlanta Shakespeare Company
April 6-28, 2024
Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse
~•~•~•~
Jane Austen's timeless novel of sisterhood comes to Atlanta
When the wealthy Mr. Dashwood dies, his introverted daughter Elinor finds herself alone at the helm of a dysfunctional family.
To make matters worse, Elinor seems to be falling in love with the only man she can't have...while her headstrong sister Marianne succumbs to the charms of a local scoundrel. As the Dashwood sisters navigate romance, heartbreak, and loss, they find an unlikely ally in their fearless tween sister Margot.
Claire F. Martin's vibrant new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility illuminates Austen's Regency world and the enduring bond of sisterhood. Belle Esprit is thrilled to bring this immersively-staged world premiere to Atlanta and the ASC.
Get tickets here.
Co-produced with the Atlanta Shakespeare Company
April 6-28, 2024
Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse
~•~•~•~
Jane Austen's timeless novel of sisterhood comes to Atlanta
When the wealthy Mr. Dashwood dies, his introverted daughter Elinor finds herself alone at the helm of a dysfunctional family.
To make matters worse, Elinor seems to be falling in love with the only man she can't have...while her headstrong sister Marianne succumbs to the charms of a local scoundrel. As the Dashwood sisters navigate romance, heartbreak, and loss, they find an unlikely ally in their fearless tween sister Margot.
Claire F. Martin's vibrant new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility illuminates Austen's Regency world and the enduring bond of sisterhood. Belle Esprit is thrilled to bring this immersively-staged world premiere to Atlanta and the ASC.
Get tickets here.
"My family needs me
far more than I need a husband."
far more than I need a husband."
Cast & Creatives
Sheri Gilbert-Wilson
Mrs. Dashwood, etc. |
Marlon Burnley
Colonel Brandon, etc. |
Kenneth Wigley
Edward Ferrars, Mrs. Palmer, & Lady Middleton |
Amanda Lindsey
Mrs. Jennings, Lucy Steele, & Fanny Dashwood |
Kevin Roost
Willoughby, Robert Ferrars, & Sir John Middleton |
~•~•~•~
Claire F. Martin — Director/Playwright
Jeffrey Watkins — Artistic Director, ASC
Andy Houchins — Producer
Gabi Anderson — Stage Manager
Julia Barton — Assistant Stage Manager
Anné Carole Butler & Clint Horne — Costume Design
Samantha Lancaster — Lighting Design
Omari Joseph — Composition & Sound Design
Rachel Frawley — Intimacy Director
Claire Wittman — Production Dramaturg
Amy Elizabeth Wachtel — Wardrobe Assistant
Jeanette Meierhofer & Amanda Lindsey — Marketing
Daniel Parvis — Photography
Claire F. Martin — Director/Playwright
Jeffrey Watkins — Artistic Director, ASC
Andy Houchins — Producer
Gabi Anderson — Stage Manager
Julia Barton — Assistant Stage Manager
Anné Carole Butler & Clint Horne — Costume Design
Samantha Lancaster — Lighting Design
Omari Joseph — Composition & Sound Design
Rachel Frawley — Intimacy Director
Claire Wittman — Production Dramaturg
Amy Elizabeth Wachtel — Wardrobe Assistant
Jeanette Meierhofer & Amanda Lindsey — Marketing
Daniel Parvis — Photography
"So we're marooned in the country."
Director's Note
"These pages betray [Jane Austen's] secret, which is that she was naturally exuberant. And her power came, as all power comes, from the control and direction of exuberance. |
For as long as I have been a storyteller, I have been shaped by the words of women. As a teenage girl growing up in that most affirming of spaces—the all-girls’ high school—I arrived at revelations about myself and the world around me through the writings of women throughout history. Sappho sang to my queerness through her tender poetry. Emily Brontë bruised my heart with her Gothic prose. Audre Lorde pierced the armor of my privilege and ignorance with her incisive, splendid philosophy.
And Jane Austen made me laugh.
It’s amazing what laughing can do for the soul. I often think of laughter as cough syrup-in-reverse; it slides up and out of the throat, rather than down it. But the effect is the same: pure medicine. To rejoice is, by ancient definition, to have one’s spirit rejuvenated. It is to feel relief from pain, however fleeting. To kindle a fire in a cold room. To blow a kiss into a volcano. To laugh is to believe in love.
Jane Austen knew this better than anyone. She was a genius in a time before women were thought capable of genius, which meant she lived in relative obscurity and ever-encroaching poverty in the English countryside, prevented by the laws of propriety even from signing her name to the novels that were changing the lives of her countrywomen. Yet whenever Austen took up her quill, she wrote not of tragedy and nihilism, but of love, female friendship, and self-discovery. Fundamentally, she believed in the principle that united her literary forebears (e.g. Hrosvitha, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Aphra Behn, etc.) as well as all their comic descendants, from Nora Zeale Hurston to Dorothy Parker to Quinta Brunson: that to make women laugh in a world that punishes us for seeking happiness on our own terms is itself an act of rebellion. Female joy is transgressive precisely because we’re supposed to believe it’s impossible.
Thus, with the verve and venom of a late-night talk show host, Austen peeled back the absurdities of small-town British patriarchy, while also rendering in affectionate detail the comedy of errors that inevitably attends any young woman’s journey towards fulfillment. By fashioning her novels out of humor, hope, and happy endings, Austen created feminist fairytales that have stood the test of time. In Sense and Sensibility, her first published manuscript, the story of the Dashwood family plays out like a Cinderella story…one in which the glass slipper is sisterhood, the fairy godmother is a kindly neighbor who uses her privilege for good, and Prince Charming is the cherry on top of a happily-ever-after that has already cultivated by a thriving community of women. And even in the novel’s bleakest moments (of which there are several), when Elinor and Marianne are forced to contend with the harshest realities of Georgian misogyny—from economic disenfranchisement to societal ostracization to verbal contempt from unenlightened men and women alike—Austen undergirds her narration with brilliant, blistering satire that both highlights and defangs the patriarchy as her heroines encounter it. Sometimes the best way to speak truth to power is simply to laugh at it.
Before anything else, it is my dearest wish, as both the writer and director of Sense and Sensibility, to translate the defiantly funny spirit of Austen’s novel into the medium of theater with enough clarity that, were the esteemed authoress herself to be seated in the audience, she would be unable to suppress a few giggles.
I hope you laugh too. I know I will. It’s 2024; goodness knows our throats could use some cough syrup.
With love and gratitude,
—Claire F. Martin
And Jane Austen made me laugh.
It’s amazing what laughing can do for the soul. I often think of laughter as cough syrup-in-reverse; it slides up and out of the throat, rather than down it. But the effect is the same: pure medicine. To rejoice is, by ancient definition, to have one’s spirit rejuvenated. It is to feel relief from pain, however fleeting. To kindle a fire in a cold room. To blow a kiss into a volcano. To laugh is to believe in love.
Jane Austen knew this better than anyone. She was a genius in a time before women were thought capable of genius, which meant she lived in relative obscurity and ever-encroaching poverty in the English countryside, prevented by the laws of propriety even from signing her name to the novels that were changing the lives of her countrywomen. Yet whenever Austen took up her quill, she wrote not of tragedy and nihilism, but of love, female friendship, and self-discovery. Fundamentally, she believed in the principle that united her literary forebears (e.g. Hrosvitha, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Aphra Behn, etc.) as well as all their comic descendants, from Nora Zeale Hurston to Dorothy Parker to Quinta Brunson: that to make women laugh in a world that punishes us for seeking happiness on our own terms is itself an act of rebellion. Female joy is transgressive precisely because we’re supposed to believe it’s impossible.
Thus, with the verve and venom of a late-night talk show host, Austen peeled back the absurdities of small-town British patriarchy, while also rendering in affectionate detail the comedy of errors that inevitably attends any young woman’s journey towards fulfillment. By fashioning her novels out of humor, hope, and happy endings, Austen created feminist fairytales that have stood the test of time. In Sense and Sensibility, her first published manuscript, the story of the Dashwood family plays out like a Cinderella story…one in which the glass slipper is sisterhood, the fairy godmother is a kindly neighbor who uses her privilege for good, and Prince Charming is the cherry on top of a happily-ever-after that has already cultivated by a thriving community of women. And even in the novel’s bleakest moments (of which there are several), when Elinor and Marianne are forced to contend with the harshest realities of Georgian misogyny—from economic disenfranchisement to societal ostracization to verbal contempt from unenlightened men and women alike—Austen undergirds her narration with brilliant, blistering satire that both highlights and defangs the patriarchy as her heroines encounter it. Sometimes the best way to speak truth to power is simply to laugh at it.
Before anything else, it is my dearest wish, as both the writer and director of Sense and Sensibility, to translate the defiantly funny spirit of Austen’s novel into the medium of theater with enough clarity that, were the esteemed authoress herself to be seated in the audience, she would be unable to suppress a few giggles.
I hope you laugh too. I know I will. It’s 2024; goodness knows our throats could use some cough syrup.
With love and gratitude,
—Claire F. Martin
Atlanta Shakespeare Company
499 Peachtree St NE Atlanta, GA 30308 Performances April 6-28, 2024 7:30pm | 2:30pm |
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