Considering the performance and writing history of Philadelphia-based theater artists Jessica Bedford, Kathryn MacMillan, Charlotte Northeast and Meghan Winch, taking on Charlotte Brontë’s empowered ‘Jane Eyre’ classic, and re-inventing it for the now, makes exquisite sense.
Sketching rich female inner lives and deconstructing origin stories such as ‘The Complete Works of Jane Austen’ (as Tiny Dynamite) into something willful and modern is that Philly quartet’s calling card.
With MacMillian as its director, and Northeast as Jane – among a special local chorus of “Janes” – their world premiere adaptation of ‘Jane Eyre’ with the Philadelphia Artists Collective takes place May 11 to 28 at Philadelphia’s Christ Church Neighborhood House.
These wunderkinds of theater, MacMillan and Northeast, each knew and loved the fusty Brontë’ classic, but wanted to give volume to the concept of forwarding the female voice, loudly.
“Women learned in 2020 what it meant to truly find our voice, are continually learning what our voice means, what impact it has, what damage it can do, what questions we bring and what answers we want: through the world of Jane Eyre, and our adaptation, is about exploring your voice now,” said Northeast. “Sometimes our “Jane” is aware of her power, sometimes not… putting that resonance across, and how we grow from it, is the heart of this new adaptation.”
As adaptor and director, MacMillan seconds that emotion, and stated that she wanted to push forward the notion that ‘Jane’ comes from a position of being “powerless, due to class, due to lack of money and connection.” So then, Eyre’s relationships to powerful institutions and education are about finding independence from the patriarchy as well as from institutional forces.
“It’s about learning to say ‘no,” offered MacMillian.
While this team of women theater artists tackled Jane Austen as lovingly and colorfully irreverent, their ‘Jane Eyre’ has other starker colors and darker tones in its crayon box to consider, “in a far more earnest way, through this sweeping, passionate story,” noted MacMillian. “There is a love story at the core of ‘Jane Eyre’, but there are so many important and wonderful stories before and after that relationship – such as female friendships, and how women influence each other and work together to find their voices and break free of the patriarchy.”
Four minds intertwined as one for ‘Jane Eyre’, Northeast related the writing and re-envisioning process of its new deconstruction to the “sweep” in catering jobs, each writer built on top of another’s with who Jane was, how Jane’s language worked and what new structure could be crafted from such speech.
“Kathryn and I came in as the editors from there with the finesses,” said Northeast of the sweep.
Along with giving breath to an entirely new world of staging for their ‘Jane Eyre’, MacMillian spoke to their adaptation’s fresh conjuring of a “chorus of Janes.”
“The physicalization of Jane’s internal struggle, the rending of her psyche from five different people in an exciting and palpable way,” how the director looked Eyre’s chorus of Janes.
“Look at all of the women in Jane’s life, how they question and better her, and break her down – it was Meghan’s idea to turn them into a ‘Jane chorus,'” noted Northeast. “Another Jane, an integral part of her world – five different Janes that come together when she needs them.”
And with that, an introverted novel of the 1840s such as Jane Eyre—one initially focused on the breadths of romance rather than one woman’s marvelous voice—is now exploded outwards toward maximal extroversion.
“What we’ve done is break ‘Jane Eyre’, the novel, out of its internal place and make it more thrilling, and theatrical, for audiences,” said Northeast.
“We’ve made an old-world novel into a three-dimensional adaptation,” said MacMillian, pointing out the heights of its semi-industrial Christ Church setting and its tech tools of projection and lighting schemes. “Physically and psychologically, we are adding imagery to Jane Eyre. Our Jane has many many levels to explore.”
For information and tickets, visit philartistscollective.org
