Mission: Possible Playwright Ellen Peterson takes on the daunting task of adapting Jane Austen for the stage By: Randall King Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018

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This article was published 16/10/2018 (2165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Go ahead. Adapt a novel by literary superstar Jane Austen. Why not?

That would seem to be the refreshingly unintimidated attitude of Winnipeg playwright Ellen Peterson to adapt Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility, as a kickoff for the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s 2018 mainstage season.

Bear in mind, when she took the assignment at the behest of outgoing artistic director Steven Schipper, Peterson hadn’t even read the book.

“No, not at all,” Peterson says in an interview in the Royal MTC boardroom. “What happened was: They did Jane Eyre here (in 2014) and I thought to myself: If I had known that MTC wanted an adaptation of Jane Eyre, I’d have tried to write one, because I love the novel and know it quite well.

“But it was too late, that ship had sailed,” she says. “So I took it upon myself — kind of out of character — to call a meeting with Steven and I said: ‘So what else are you looking for?’”

Schipper responded that he was interested in a play about cops.

“I said: ‘I don’t have one.’

“But it became a running joke between us,” she says, laughing. “I’d see him in lobbies and he’d ask: ‘How’s the cop show coming along?’ And I’d say: ‘I still don’t have one.’

“But then they were looking for an adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, very specifically, and they couldn’t find an adaptation that they liked and so thought: ‘Who in Winnipeg wants to do this?’ And thankfully, they thought of me.

“So I went to a meeting with him and (associate artistic director Krista Jackson) expecting to talk about the cop show and they pushed this novel across the table at me.

“And I thought: ‘Gee, I hope I like it.’”

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First published in 1811 under the pseudonym “A Lady,” the novel tells of the fortunes of the Dashwood sisters Elinor and Marianne, left nearly destitute after the death of their father. The sisters’ search for love leads to a series of complexities exacerbated by the strict social mores of Britain during the Regency era.

For Peterson, the book primarily presented a challenge.

“It was an interesting place to start because I had no pre-existing reverence for it,” she says.

That came in handy, of course. Adapting a novel means a lot of cutting of material, including Austen’s much-loved dialogue.

“I tried to make the language Austen-esque while still sounding comfortable enough to our ears that nobody’s thinking: ‘What did they say?’

“With too many words around it, you can’t understand the intentions, so the language is greatly simplified.”

Because she didn’t want narration, swaths of Austen’s prose had to be cut too. And it hurt Peterson to say goodbye.

“Some of the things that are so delicious about Jane Austen is her asides,” Peterson says. “They’re very cutting. A character comes in and you know instantly what kind of a jerk this is. She pulls no punches.

“And unless I was going to have a narrator say all that, which I didn’t want to do, you lose all of that. So how do I get a character across that she did in two sentences? How do I walk them onto the stage? So that’s where I started.”

“There’s a lot gone, boiling it down to its essentials,” she says. “That hurts too because there’s a couple of characters that I had to lose — two of the funniest characters in the book as far as I’m concerned.

“I love the Palmers. But I couldn’t use them because I simply didn’t have time.”

A revival of Austen would seem to be especially timely at a point in history when women are facing a renewed fight for their rights in the age of #MeToo, Peterson says.

“There’s never a bad time for Austen,” she says. “We are not so far as we would like to be from the kind of powerlessness that Austen is talking about.

“We have it disguised now a bit better,” she says. “It’s just not as overt.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

Randall King
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In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat.

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