Meaning and Performance

Frost, Anthony; Yarrow, Ralph

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-20948-4_10

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“…32 Improvisation as a dramatic form embodies these interactive processes, creating meaning through "the collision […] of different sets of meaning", and generating "active" spectators that not only read but write the performance too. 33 In Austentatious, the audience not only determines the title of the play, but through its responses, directs the company toward (or away from) certain jokes, actions, plot turns, or even characters. In one performance, when the evening's title was read out, an audible response from a woman in the audience signalled the whereabouts of the writer, who was revealed as Kirsty Heard in Seat G10.…”

Section: Austentatious and Postmodern Adaptationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Austentatious: Comedy Improv and Austen Adaptation in the Twenty-first Century

Civale

2018

Women's Writing

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Recent decades have seen Jane Austen move outside the classroom to assume a pop-culture presence through a proliferation of virtual, visual, and textual adaptations, spin-offs, sequels, mash-ups, and fan-fiction, along with websites, blogs, and merchandising. Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel, a one-hour comedy play performed in the style of Jane Austen, offers a new addition to Austen's literary legacy. Since the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe, this improvisation troupe has been staging Austen's "lost" works, by randomly drawing a title from a collection of audience suggestions, and launching directly into the action. Fast paced and hilarious, Austentatious blends narrative and gags, Regency and popular culture, "Austenspeak" and modern slang. Critics may regard it as another reductive appropriation, but, as this essay suggests, Austentatious marks a significant intervention in Austen's afterlife. Both send-up and celebration, this improvised comedy trades in familiar tropes: feisty ladies, matchmaking relatives, and romantic entanglements. These clichés are played for laughs, but Austen is not the only target. Austentatious also lampoons the textually promiscuous nature of Austen adaptation, and the "free" treatment of Austen by academics. Austentatious parodies not only the original novels but the phenomenon of (Austen) adaptation itself-whether high-brow or low-in the twenty-first century. Finally, through a new kind of long-form improvisation, Austentatious demonstrates the critical and creative potential in this most irreverent recreation of Austen.

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Section: Austentatious and Postmodern Adaptationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Austentatious: Comedy Improv and Austen Adaptation in the Twenty-first Century

Civale

2018

Women's Writing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Meaning and Performance

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Austentatious: Comedy Improv and Austen Adaptation in the Twenty-first Century

Austentatious: Comedy Improv and Austen Adaptation in the Twenty-first Century

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