Abstract
This essay discusses how I incorporated readers theatre into a senior seminar on Jane Austen and her contemporaries. The article recounts how my students read Elizabeth Inchbald’s 1798 drama, Lovers’ Vows, and Austen’s 1814 novel, Mansfield Park, and then were inspired at the end of the seminar to take part in a readers theatre production of the play. In order to set up this pedagogical example, the essay addresses the theatrical episode of Mansfield Park, the controversies surrounding Lovers’ Vows, and the ways in which I edited the play and prepared students to create a “little theatre”—to quote Austen character, Tom Bertram—at my university and become their own version of The Mansfield Players. The essay concludes by explaining what students can learn about drama and the novel by partaking in such an exercise.
Keywords
readers theatre, live text, theatricals, drama, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Inchbald, Mansfield Park, Lovers’ Vows
Recommended Citation
Krueger, Misty
(2015)
"Mansfield Park Comes to Life: Teaching and Staging Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows in an Austen Course,"
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830: Vol.5: Iss.1, Article 2.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.5.1.1
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol5/iss1/2
Included in
Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons