Bertha's Ghost

Both The Daily NonPareil and KVNO News announce the reprisal for a limited time of Jill Anderson as Charlotte Brontë in William Luce's Brontë in Omaha, NE:

The Bluebarn Theatre, 614 S. 11th St., Omaha, presents a limited four-night run of “Brontë” by William Luce April 4-7. This 2011 sell-out drama was featured in Joslyn Castle’s popular literary festival “Romance at the Castle: The Brontës.”
This one-woman play is about the life of famous English authoress, Charlotte Brontë, writer of “Jane Eyre.” In the drama, Brontë returns home from the funeral of her last remaining sibling and begins life alone with her father in their remote North England parsonage. She reflects on the remarkable incidents, triumphs, tragedies and relationships that have brought her to the present moment and looks toward the future with hope and courage.

“It’s really kind of an exploration of the lives of the famous literary Brontë family. That would be Charlotte Brontë, who wrote Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë, who wrote Wuthering Heights, and their sister Anne and brother Branwell, who wrote lesser works but were also notable literary figures.” (...)
“Charlotte was the sister that appealed to me the most because her mind and her literature have such a refinement, an unsentimental quality to the writing. All of her literary output, whether it be poetry, novels, journal and diary entries… her mind was incredibly unique. She a biting sense of humor, a great sardonic wit. She was atypical for women of her area, she was way before her time.
While the play’s words might be the same at the 2011 production, Anderson says that the change of location from Music Room of the Joslyn Castle to the more intimate space of the Blue Barn Theatre will have a unique effect on the show.
“Every space has it’s own essence. When you enter the confines of that space, it tells you what it needs and wants in terms of your performance. This is a theatre, so it’s very enclosed. It has a tightness to it, more of a cramped feeling, which in a lot of ways works psychologically well with this story because she’s coming home to a cramped situation in her life.” (Bill Grennan)

More details about Sheila Hancock's Perspectives documentary on the Brontës in The Huddersfield Examiner:

Veteran actress Sheila Hancock spent time in Mirfield filming a documentary about the Brontë sisters.
The programme will be screened by ITV on Sunday and includes ‘an encounter with a ghost’.
The TV star visited Hollybank Trust’s Roe Head building in Mirfield and the Red House Museum, Gomersal, where the sisters, especially Charlotte, spent some of their formative years.
The Shakespearean actress is narrating the documentary and visited key locations from their life stories to film pieces to camera for the programme.
The oldest building at Roe Head, at Far Common Road, Mirfield, was a boarding school for girls in the 1830s. (...)
Marketing officer Rosey James pointed out mysterious aspects of Roe Head.
She said: “I pointed out the small attic door behind which the ghost of Roe Head is reputed to live. It’s at the top of a steep flight of steps which the story says is where a servant fell to her death.
“Sheila became very excited and insisted on going into the attic to see for herself.”
Sheila was shown round the attic rooms which used to be the servants’ quarters and part of the attic which is unused.
Through a gap in the wall, it is possible to see an antiquated, very dusty prayer kneeler covered in cobwebs.
Rosey added: “I pointed out the kneeler and told her that nobody would go near it now – apparently whenever it has been moved or even disturbed, there has been a terrible commotion from the attic, with loud noises and banging. This goes on until the kneeler is put back in its place.
“Sheila was convinced that there was a connection between this ghostly presence and Charlotte Brontë’s ‘mad woman in the attic’ Bertha in Jane Eyre. Both Charlotte and her friend Ellen Nussey refer to the ghost in their letters and these spooky stories could have inspired her when writing her great novel.”
The film crew also worked at Red House Museum, a house Charlotte visited regularly during the 1830s.

The Foster's Daily Democrat announces a book club read of Agnes Grey:

RiverRun Bookstore will hold its monthly Classics Book Group on Monday, April 15 at 7 p.m. This month’s book will be Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. Classics Book Group meets the third Monday of each month.
Agnes Grey is undoubtedly a deeply personal novel, in which Anne Brontë views on the ‘contemporary’ issue of the treatment of governesses, as well as her passionate religious sympathies, find very deliberate expression; but she also touches on issues of moral behavior, moral responsibility, and individual integrity and its survival. Nobody reads Anne Brontë, so let’s do it!

Nobody reads Anne Brontë? Ok, not a vast majority, but Anne Brontë is not really in the forgotten writers category.

The people behind the interactive online adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries announce a new adaptation for this summer. In The Daily Beast:

As for new content, Pemberly Digital will unveil Welcome to Sanditon, a short interactive series based on Jane Austen’s unfinished novel, this May. This summer a new novel will receive a full YouTube adaptation. The book hasn’t been announced yet, but Su hinted that it will be like Pride and Prejudice in the “Austen-Charlotte Brontë female-driven genre.” (Molly Taylor)

Der Tagesspiegel (Germany) reviews the Wuthering Heights 2011 DVD:

Gesprochen wird nicht viel: Arnold zeigt die Emotionen hinter den Bildern, verdichtet die Atmosphäre, durch Geräusche, Details. Gräser im Wind, Wolken, Schlamm am Rocksaum, Augen, Blicke, Gesten: Aus alldem komponiert sie das, was man gerne Seelenlandschaft nennt. Leider erlebte Arnolds Brontë-Verfilmung nur eine spärliche Kinoauswertung und ist auf der großen Leinwand doch besonders beeindruckend. (Karl Hafner) (Translation)

Big Gay Picture Show was not so happy with the film:

A motion picture in which little actually seems to be happening can be delivered in such a masterful and powerful way that you cannot help but dive head-first into the characters and their world. Every silence is a story, every expression is a Shakespearean monologue: you just need to be brave and read into it.
Eytan Fox’s Yossi succeeded to some extent. Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights tried and failed. (Adrian Naik)

Innovation Excellence describes the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) like this:

Massive Open Online Course are an innovation suited for technical courses, learning Java or php, electronics or mapping, less so for essays on Jane Eyre or colonialism in Africa.

An alert from Concord, NH:

Author Sabin Willett will discuss his new book Abide With Me tonight at Gibson’s Bookstore. The novel is a modern-day take on Wuthering Heights, set in Afghanistan at the non-wuthering height of the Taliban insurgency. Willett’s experiences at Guantanamo Bay as pro bono legal aid for prisoners served as inspiration and experience for Abide With Me.
The discussion and book signing starts at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore. For more information, visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562. (Ben Conant and Keith Testa in The Concord Monitor)

The novel is reviewed by Open Letters Monthly.

Las Vegas Cityville announces a new production of The Mystery of Irma Vep at Las Vegas Little Theater:

Vampires, mummies, ghosts, an Egyptian princess brought back to life and a werewolf, with quick cross-dressing — this is comedy skewering the dark side. Two actors portray all eight roles in this Gothic spoof, which references to classic horror movies; Joyce, Wilde, Poe and Ibsen; Wuthering Heights and Gaslight and Rebecca.

Consultant-News has a most mysterious Wuthering Heights reference in an article about the UK budget:

So what George [Osborne] used his elbow room for was a series of nudges and I wonder if I don’t discern the fingerprints of the Government’s actual “nudge department” (aka the Behavioural Insights Team). This shadowy unit is drawing on cutting-edge thinking to deploy little psychological prompts to create major shifts in behaviour, such as paying taxes and fines. One day they will leave a copy of Wuthering Heights with a £10 note inside it on a park bench in Acton and the economy will roar back into action. (Mick James)

The Telegraph has an article about the hortillonnages of Amiens:

I read Graham Swift’s Waterland, a tale of people and places that captured the spirit of the incessantly flat Fens as comprehensively as Wuthering Heights claimed the moors. It released the watery levels from what my brain had condemned as a monotonous, featureless, absence of elevation and I saw it for the complex coexistence of water and land that it is. (Mark Diacono)

Now Toronto reviews the film Womb:

A plausible science fiction idea gets near-Gothic treatment, with echoes of Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, to create a slow-burning mood piece fraught with sexual tension. (Andrew Dowler)

The Telegraph & Argus mentions the publication of a couple of books charting the Yorkshire Water Way. One of the stages happens in Brontë country:

Next stage is a six-hour 12-miler between Haworth and Hebden Bridge past the Lower Laithe and Walshaw Dean reservoirs, with the Bronte Bridge, Wuthering Heights and Gibson’s Mill at Hardcastle Crags as highlights. (Mike Priestley)

Cinema Italiano announces a screening of Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión at the Alphaville Cineclub in Rome (April 5, 21.00 h); Nascent Emissions, In the Forest Clearing... and DulcineaWilson review Jane Eyre; Addicted to Jane Austen has read and hated I.J. Miller's Wuthering Nights; LadyLavinia's 1932 Blog reviews Jane Eyre 1996; Ex Libris reviews Catherine by April Lindner.

Finally, Julie Akhurst, the dynamic Brontë Parsonage Communications Officer reports that the first monthly BS/BPM newsletter is out:

The first ever edition of our emailable newsletter - for March - has just gone out, but it's not too late to get a copy if you'd like one. Just send me your name and email and I'll make sure you're added to our list.