Our Journey with JASNA

Lindsay and I began our musical adaptation process of "Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, A Musical" at the 2000 Annual General meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA)

In 2000, the meeting took place in Boston, with the theme PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. When we arrived in Boston that weekend, Lindsay and I heard lectures and presentations from Jane Austen enthusiasts and scholars for two days. Their knowledge and passion became the foundation of our adaptation process, and it became evident that we would need to treat the text with care as we translated it from its novel form into the creative art form of American Musical Theater.

Our adaptation is a musical theater work we call "Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, A Musical" because Jane Austen is the central character in our story. As Jane Austen revisits her rejected work "First Impressions", (the first draft of her novel and what we now know to be PRIDE AND PREJUDICE), we live the love story of Elizabeth and Darcy through Jane Austen's imagination. Without JASNA and the 2000 AGM, our musical would not be what it is today.


Our work has had numerous twists and turns in its developmental process and in 2002, we presented seven songs at the JASNA Annual General Meeting in Toronto. The work was enthusiastically received and today those original seven songs still remain in our show. They are the pillars of our work and were crucial to our musical development of Jane Austen's characters.

To help us with our research, members of JASNA encouraged us to go to England, and to see Jane Austen's world through contemporary eyes. In July 2003, Lindsay and I took a three-week research trip visiting all the places mentioned in the novel, and all the places where Jane Austen wrote it.

When we visited Chawton Cottage, where Austen lived and worked, we were inspired to make Jane Austen a character to tell the love story of Darcy and Elizabeth. In our musical, Austen revisits her rejected novel "FIRST IMPRESSION" and we witness her creative process as she revises the novel that eventually became "PRIDE AND PREJUDICE."

Following our research trip, Steve Daigle invited us to workshop our material in the Eastman 804 Annex at the Eastman School of Music in the Spring of 2004. Eastman has some of the finest vocal talent in the world, and its Voice and Opera Departments were very supportive.

Following this success, Daigle asked if he could present our show to the Board of the Ohio Light Opera, and it had its WORLD PREMIERE in 2006. The show received excellent reviews and SOLD OUT performances.

After Ohio, it was optioned for Broadway in January 2007. With this three-year contract, it had a different kind of development into a commercially viable theater piece because we had the opportunity to work with very talented Broadway actors/singers and a Broadway creative team.

With the ending of the Broadway contract in December 2009, this freed the show, making it possible for groups to license the work. When that happened, the show was licensed by Chamber Opera Chicago for a full production in February/March 2010.

Of those three performances, two were "SOLD OUT". We discovered the show could cross between opera and musical theater. We also discovered it encouraged new audiences of older teenage girls, mothers and daughters, and young women in their 20's.

From our years of development, we know that our musical is a solid work, thoroughly researched and developed to cross into both worlds of Musical Theater and Opera. It is available for licensing to theater companies, high schools, college music and theater departments and community theater groups.

Every step of the way, JASNA has been our measuring stick for the quality of our work. By providing us access to Jane Austen scholars and opportunities to share our work, JASNA educated us and we became knowledgeable about a great work of literature with a unique perspective a Jane Austen's life and work.

With these experiences, we have made friends and we think everyone who loves Jane Austen will love to be a part of JASNA. JOIN!!!

We love Jane Austen even more than the day we started, and we want everyone to pick up Jane Austen and READ!!!

Thank you JASNA!