Preview
Identifier
Emma Playbill_Page_05
Creation Date
10-3-2025
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Theatre and Performance Studies
Description
FROM THE DIRECTOR - Brianna Lucas Larson
Welcome to the A-State Department of Theatre’s fall 2025 production of Emma. As we began preparing for the show, one of the main ideas we investigated was control, as well as the lack thereof that we often experience. Not only does Emma feel the need to have control in her life, but much of this need stems from the fact that she lives in a time when someone like her would not have been given much control or opportunity to make her own path. Due to the reality she finds herself in, she directs her energy wherever she feels she can exert control. This turns the lives of some of her friends into almost a game as she aims to push them in certain directions she sees fit, sometimes making great strides towards success, “forward onward upward,” and sometimes with plans falling flat or even feeling as if she is sliding backwards. It is that game-like nature that we connected with and continued to integrate into the work we were doing. We enjoyed that exploration as we worked to tell the story of this beloved Jane Austen novel through the beautiful, anachronistic lens created by Kate Hamill, which lives both in Regency England and with us here, in this theatre, today. I hope you’ll enjoy watching our interpretation as Emma ‘plays the game’ and tries to exert her control, even though she will eventually learn that life and love both have their own agendas.
Publisher
Arkansas State University
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Theatre Program
Keywords
Jane Austen, regency era, period drama
