Love and Freindship (Dramatic Reading)

Jane Austen

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Love and Freindship [sic] is a melodramatic epistolary novelette written by Jane Austen when she was fourteen years old. Although the novels Austen became known for were not published until she was in her thirties, she was an active writer from the age of twelve, frequently composing epistolary works such as Love and Freindship. Austen eventually compiled 29 of her early writings in three notebooks that became known as the Juvenilia and that she called “Volume the First”, “Volume the Second”, and “Volume the Third”, including Love and Freindship in “Volume the Second”.

Love and Freindship is set contemporaneously to Austen’s writing and consists of a series of fifteen letters, most of which are written from the perspective of the protagonist, Laura, who recounts her extraordinary personal history to her friend Isabel’s daughter. The novel satirizes sentimental novels, which were a popular genre at the time. Austen’s early works are frequently published with the original spelling errors unaltered, a practice that is particularly conspicuous in the case of Love and Freindship because of the spelling error in the title. Austen dedicated this novelette to her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, who is believed by literary critics to have inspired multiple characters in Austen’s writings, including the titular character in the novel Lady Susan. In 2016, Lady Susan was adapted into a film that borrowed the title Love & Friendship, albeit with the spelling corrected. - Summary by David Purdy

Cast List:

Laura: Irene Rubio
Sophia: Devorah Allen
Edward Lindsay: Larry Wilson
Isabel: rosefiasco
Augusta: Jenn Broda
Gustavus: Tomas Peter
Polydore: David Purdy
Claudia: Michelle Purdy
Sir Edward: Adrian Stephens
Augustus: redrun
Philippa: Norah Nelson
Lord St. Clair: Algy Pug
Janetta: deaspoke
MacDonald: ToddHW
Servant: Greg Giordano
Postilion: Rich Brown
Innkeeper: John Payton
Narrator: James R. Hedrick
(1 hr 24 min)

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