Los Angeles Times has an article about theatre director Meryl Friedman. One anecdote of the
Jane Eyre 1991 Lifeline production in Chicago is recalled:
Christina Calvit, a Chicago writer and Lifeline company member, came to appreciate Friedman's imaginative reach as they collaborated. Especially vivid, she says, was the set Friedman ordered for "Jane Eyre," capable of collapsing every night around a central beam to enact the destruction of Thornfield, the story's bleak Gothic manor. In the first preview, Calvit recalled, the rigging came down only part of the way, leaving a beam and curtains dangling.
"Meryl looked at me and said, 'That's incredibly dangerous to actors, I've got to stop the show.' She got on stage, ripped those curtains down, and the show went on. That was a moment of shining glory. She sees a problem, she takes care of it." (Mike Boehm)
Zadie Smith finds echoes of Jane Eyre in her review of
Zora Neale Hurston's 1937
Their Eyes Were Watching God for
The Guardian:
That part of Janie that is looking for someone (or something) that "spoke for far horizon" has its proud ancestors in Elizabeth Bennet, in Dorothea Brooke, in Jane Eyre, even - in a very debased form - in Emma Bovary.
Another writer that was influenced by a Brontë, Emily in this case, was
Mary Lee Settle, but not in a literary way as this
New York Times review of her memoirs,
Learning to Fly, states:
At 27, working for Harper’s Bazaar, she finds herself staring at a layout inspired by “Wuthering Heights.” Realizing that Emily Brontë died at the age of 30, Settle resolves to do more than “flirt with a vocation.” (Alex Kuczynski)
In other news, Maureen Adams's
Shaggy Muses is picked as editor's choice in
The Star Phoenix and more moors (two words that we cannot tie together as much as we would like) in
Loretta's Travels in Europe 2007.
Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre
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