We had a great chat with Lori Bajorek, the producer of the musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, written by Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs, that will open on Broadway sometime next year. We attended a reading of the show last year; we went in curious, hopeful, wanting something great but still skeptical (it’s not like we’ve never been burned by a Jane Austen adaptation before) but were completely won over by the fun, funny, intelligent show, which is not just Pride and Prejudice but includes Jane Austen herself as a character. Jane discovers the rejection letter she received from Cadell for First Impressions, and decides to work on the book and try to get it published. She interacts with the characters, giving them direction but letting them tell the story. It’s a lovely, complex play, thankfully not a bit dumbed down, with beautiful music and memorable songs. We’re pretty excited about the idea of this going to Broadway, so we were also really excited to speak with Ms. Bajorek and hear her passion for the project. (Click on the photos for larger versions)

What attracted you to this play?

I’ve been friends with Amanda for ten years and I’ve watched her on this journey of writing it. When I went to see the show when it was produced by the Ohio Light Opera, I met a man who had been there three times. The last show was sold-out and standing room only, and I said, “I want to be part of this.”

Were you a Janeite before you became producer of this play?

I would not consider myself to be a Janeite, but I have a deep respect for people who are Janeites. Everybody I meet either is or knows somebody who is in love with this novel. My background is marketing, and I started to do research to find out why so many people liked Jane Austen. One out of a hundred would be good, but I found it was more like one out of two knew the novel. I didn’t realize what an icon Jane Austen was. I read the book in high school and never revisited it. When I decided I was going to do something with the show, I needed to quickly find out who was who in the story, so I rented Bride and Prejudice. I fell in love with it. My mother-in-law is a Janeite and has read the book about 17 times. She has every adaptation. I handed her the script and asked her, “Are we on the right track?” and she said she liked it. I didn’t have enough knowledge to base upon when there were so many people who knew more about it. I asked them, “Tell me what you think,” and they said we captured the essence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. There are a trillion adaptation of this beloved novel, but this one was special.

I’m not a Janeite but I’m a woman who understands what it’s like to try to do something outside the box, and I became more obsessed with the Jane Austen character being a writer and trying to make decisions on her own, and having her novel rejected and then deciding to go ahead and work on it again and try again to get it published. If you get to the core of what makes a woman a woman and what makes Jane Austen an icon is that she went against the odds and did something amazing, though nobody was out there being her supporter, she was able to create a masterpiece that still exists today. She’s brilliant. The world needs to know that this was not an author who just wrote amazing love stories, this is a woman who was a pioneer, and that’s what inspires me about this play. (more…)

Alert Janeite Julie P. sent us a link to the next cross-stitch chart in the Jane Austen series: stitch up Rosings Park, and have a little bit of Lady Catherine with you all the time! We dare say Mr. Collins would admire it as it should be.

The Times has an article on Jemima Rooper, who is playing Amanda, the time-traveling character who swaps with Elizabeth Bennet in Lost in Austen. The article is mostly about the actress with only a little bit about the program–though we’re thinking that the timing of this article is not completely coincidental.

Her next role - and one that could be her breakthrough into living rooms across the land - is in ITV1’s primetime autumn spectacular Lost in Austen. Rooper plays a modern woman who steps into the plot of Pride and Prejudice. It gives her a chance to display a fine range, from serious to slap-stick: “I turn up at balls and don’t know the steps, but I’m pretty outspoken, so slowly start to influence other women and change the plot of the novel.”

Paging Mary Sue, Mary Sue, please pick up the white courtesy phone…

The blog What Would Virginia Do? (We believe that refers to Virginia Woolf) has an entry relating to the Telegraph article we posted the other day complaining about All Those Jane Austen Adaptations.

How can this character be based on Lizzie Bennett? Bright, sparkly, proud, sharp as a tack Lizzie; the young woman who loves her friends, despairs of her parents, and won’t accept the condescension of Mr Darcy - refusing him until he shows a little respect rather than humiliating herself as his feet. I expect I am just repeating what half the internet have said already but all my grated feelings came up again and I had to get them out.

Well, really, Bridget Jones isn’t supposed to be Elizabeth Bennet. We once wrote in a short review of BJD (the book) that while many of us modern girls wish we were Elizabeth Bennet, we were more likely to be Bridget Jones, trying to “have it all” and not quite succeeding, but learning to accept the small victories. Though in a way, that is like Elizabeth, who thinks she knows herself but does not–and learns to accept her shortcomings.

And really, who hasn’t been late for work because she was staring out a window for half an hour?

*crickets*

Here’s our weekly roundup of articles that didn’t quite make the cut for full blog entries, but we thought our readers might find interesting nonetheless.

Mark Blankenship finds P&P a “hot and sexy summer read” — but pray do not book a chaise to the charming village of High Dudgeon, Gentle Reader; it’s all in good snark.

There will be a 5K walk around Stoneleigh Abbey, once owned by Jane Austen’s cousin, in September.

This is also an open thread, so feel free to discuss the above articles or anything at all that’s going on in your part of Janeiteville!

A new musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (the fourth fairly recent one by our count) will debut this Friday, August 1, and run through August 16, 2008, at the SCERA Center in Orem, Utah. Tickets are $8-14 and are available online. As always, we would love a report from any AustenBlog reader who attends!

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

If she could bring back just one writer for a chinwag? She interrupts. “It would be Jane [Austen],” she says. “We’d have tea.” She takes a sip of the English breakfast. “And, of course, we’d talk about you.”