We are so pleased to announce that Verde Valley Theatre is staging an original dramatization of a minor work by Jane Austen and directed by Michelle Lambeau, for its March 2010 production.
This production will be a first for VVT: A rehearsed reading of one of its members’ original scripts. The staging will be contemporary: we will forgo the traditional sets of so many of our shows and rely on lighting and sound to engage the audience’s imagination while keeping up a strong pace as the action unfolds. We will be inviting viewers’ input to improve the script. The show will run from March 3,4, 5, 6, 7, 2010 at the Clark Memorial Clubhouse located at 9th and Main Streets in historic downtown Clarkdale.
Though never published during her lifetime, Jane Austen completed this, her first novel when she was around 19 years old. It was a novel of letters, a common literary device back in the 18th century. Little is known about the circumstances surrounding the creation of the manuscript. Jane Austen never gave it a title, and it was not published until many years after her death–even then, over strenuous though unexplained objections by other family members. The publisher simply named it after the main character, Lady Susan, and it became a sensation among Jane Austen devotees. Even so, it was never counted among her major literary accomplishments, and has been relegated heretofore to collections categorized as ‘minor works’ or ‘juvenilia.’
Lady Susan is the 19-year-old Jane Austen’s recounting of the eponymous heroine’s romantic rampages through the hearts of the men she ensnares with her charms–and the wretched women she leaves in her wake. We follow her exploits as she grapples with the challenge of securing enough money to survive along with her daughter in a society determined to hold women in check by keeping them forever at the financial mercy of their men folk. The one way out is matrimony. And matrimony has been the grail of romantic female aspirations since the dawn of money.
Even at this early age, Jane Austen offers us all the insight into the deepest darkest motivators of social discourse which keep her as essential to understanding the human heart today as she ever was two hundred plus years ago. And she presents her story with all the wit and elegance of language that ensures her generation after generation of appreciative fans.
The title role of Lady Susan goes to Alyssa Majewski, longtime actress and director in her own right, and teacher of English at the Mingus Union High School (MUHS). Tera Ponce, MUHS Senior, will play the role of her daughter, Frederica. Lady Susan’s brother-in-law, Charles Vernon, will be played by Grand Theatre manager and lighting designer Guy Darland. He is husband to Catherine, whose role is held by local musician and voice teacher Brittany Smith. Landscape photographer Brent Jones will make his stage debut in Arizona in the role of the dashing Reginald De Courcy. Ashly Lawler, currently enrolled in Yavapai College, is cast as Lady Susan’s close friend and ally, Alicia, wife of the eminently respectable Mr Johnson, played by veteran actor and graphic designer Jesse Majewski. The cast is rounded off with the talent of James Ball in the role of Sir James Martin. James is well-known to theatre-goers throughout the Verde Valley since he has not only appeared on the Clarkdale stage a number of times, but is also Theatre and Choir Director for MUHS.
For more information on this upcoming performance, please call Verde Valley Theatre at 649-0626 or go to our website at www.verdevalleytheatre.com.
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