Guest Blog: Joannah Tincey On Adapting PRIDE AND PREJUDICE For Two Actors

I've loved Pride and Prejudice since I first read it. I think I was about 17, and I was caught up in the romance of it (no doubt fuelled by a great appreciation of Mr Firth's iconic Mr Darcy). In rereading the novel later in life, I was more struck by Austen's acerbic wit. It was much funnier than I remembered. I was also bowled over by the characters, and they were one of the main reasons I wanted to create a new adaptation, and specifically one with two actors.

Pride and Prejudice is a story of doubles: Darcy and Lizzy, Jane and Lizzy, Jane and Bingley, Mr and Mrs Bennet, Lydia and Kitty... And, of course, it is this iconic love story too, so it seemed natural to tell it with a couple of actors.

At its heart, Pride and Prejudice is a romance about two people who don't see each other very clearly at first. There's a pleasing symmetry about two actors playing those lovers and all the other characters who surround their coming together. There are just so many double acts in the novel, and you get this wonderful layering of perspectives as we switch between them. Then, at the core, are Darcy and Lizzy, drawing closer to the truth about one another.

I also wanted to focus on theatricality, and celebrate what theatre is capable of. It's a testament to Austen's original characters that they're so vividly drawn you can summon them with a flick of a handkerchief or the wave of a pipe. When she wrote her novels, she asked family members to read them aloud to help her shape them. There's amazing theatricality to her writing as a result, and it's a great privilege to celebrate that.

I've been lucky enough to have worked on a number of multiple-role-playing-type theatre jobs: playing Celia and Phoebe in As You Like It; Mrs Joe Biddy and Wemmick in Great Expectations, and Hero and Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing. It struck me, doing that sort of work, how very clear and engaging the story becomes. You really have to use the words to help create the characters and the world for the audience, so everything becomes active. It's an imaginative game, and that game is at the centre of the relationship between the audience and the performers. It's a brilliant celebration of what, for me, is at the heart of theatre.

I also think Austen is a genius and I wanted to make it about her words. I've kept a mixture of dialogue and third-person narrative in the adaptation, and we worked to put the narration into the mouths of the characters themselves. It means the words are Austen's and the characters are constantly talking to the audience. This had the added benefit that I didn't have to invent dialogue - my job was to select and arrange Austen's text for performance.

In order to make it a realistic length for theatre, some beloved scenes and even characters had to go. But I held onto the fact that I was able to retain the purity of Austen's language. It was a bit like doing an enormous but very rewarding jigsaw puzzle. I had to keep in my head the arc of the whole story and how the characters would share the telling between them. I wanted to preserve the integrity of each character and balance all those double acts in a way that built audience involvement through the play.

Pride and Prejudice is a classic, but my aim as a writer, and our aim as performers, is to bring it to life in a theatrical context so that we can take the audience on a journey with us - whether they've read the novel or not. In the past we've had lots of audience members who don't know the novel or indeed any of Austen's work, and they've been with us every step of the way - thank goodness.

I wanted the play to celebrate Austen's wit and her wonderful characters. And I wanted the story to be all the things the book is - fun, moving and romantic - told through the unique prism of theatre. I hope I've succeeded. The Pride and Prejudice van is now hitting the road, and Lizzy, Darcy and the rest of our gang are travelling around the UK until Christmas. I can't wait.

Pride and Prejudice at Greenwich Theatre 20-22 October. Full tour dates and venues here

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