i’m just finishing my senior year at NYU Tisch Drama, and my senior thesis project was a theatrical adaptation of Jane Eyre that i’ve been writing/composing for the last two years, which investigates the toxic structures that lie beneath the tropes of feminist romance.
before it opened, it had to become a digital thesis project! so we made a visual album of some of the music from the show, over the last month with our cast from afar! thought you might enjoy it! hope you all are well. <3
I love that part where Jane is leveling with her audience, like ‘Reader, I know, I know, he’s a mess, but I put a ring on it anyway’
Yes. That’s why it’s my favorite novel and love story.
In the musical he asks her “what can I offer you?” After learning her fortune and her well earned and long desired independence. And that’s the point. He can give her nothing but his heart and desire. That’s all she wants. It’s her choice.
Jane Eyre is about her finding her own self and making her choices no matter what society thinks, her belief in god is cultivated completely on her own and not formed what was preached to her on an abusive level for 8 years, her love with Rochester was always about throwing convention out the window. So when people make those judgments about her own choice at her own desired happily ever after I feel they are getting the entire meaning of the book completely the wrong way round.
however, he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly.
My love for this production is beyond words. This scene plus when he realizes Jane is the same person he met in the lane makes up for the fact they rearranged those scenes.
I would say that National Theatre’s Jane Eyre is a true first person play and a semi perfect adaptation for me of the novel, especially knowing that it was a two night event before it was shortened for filming. I love that they had the bare stage so the focus is in the actors, their movements and their words, how the other actors occasionally becoming Jane’s inner subconscious and voice, and the music. Oh the use of music! How I wish there was a soundtrack, never thought “Mad about the Boy” and “Crazy” could fit damn well into Jane Eyre. I highly recommend this show. For any theater fan, literature fan and especially for a Jane Eyre fan. (PM me, if interested, I may or may not have a Google drive link.)
