Dramaturg Kristin Leahey interviews Jon Jory, Sense & Sensibility playwright and director

Q:  What inspired you to write adaptations of Jane Austen’s work?

A:  Well, I think because like a good playwright, she strings out a story almost perfectly.  In her novels, she keeps you there because you specifically want some particular thing to happen in the story.  She strings it out and puts obstacles in the way; she was a great novelist, and she taught all the Harlequin Romance writers how to construct a story.  I think that it just seemed very essentially dramatic in the sense that in the best plays the audience always has a point of view.  They want things to come out alright for Willy Loman, and then it’s fixed so it doesn’t, so you have a very particular response.

I also just liked Austen’s writing.  I actually hadn’t done anything from the Regency Period, but I had done other plays and set them in the Regency Period – one of them would be Antony and Cleopatra. Also my wife let me know in no uncertain terms that I was obviously uneducated because I hadn’t read Jane Austen’s novels.  So I read them; I didn’t really read an Austen novel until 15 or 20 years ago – and I read them, and I just had a really good time, so that is why.

Q:  What interested you in adapting Sense and Sensibility in particular?

A:  Well, first of all, it’s pretty nearly the only through-line of one of her novels that actually has two heroines, so it’s different than the others.  There are other good parts, but Pride and Prejudice is very definitely about Elizabeth, Emma is very definitely about Emma, and Persuasion is very much about Anne.

After I did Pride and Prejudice and Emma, I thought, “Oh, well Sense and Sensibility is refreshing,” and a nice challenge because of the fact that you have to keep both stories alive and in balance, so it seemed fun because it was equally accomplished but a very different structure from the other novels.

Q:  What is your adaptation process?

A:  I go through the book, and I underline all the parts I like.  Then, I literally write straight through the book.  I usually end up with three times the material I need.  But I literally write everything.  And then I go back and start crossing out parts that I don’t need, but it gives me a better sense of the novel.  I learn a lot about the novel on that first go-through.  I’m having to pay attention because I’m sort of writing every chapter.  I’m not very good about just going off in a corner and just thinking about things in my head; it’s better for me to actually do them and to learn from doing them, so that’s what I do.  I end up with something that’s probably totally unfeasible as a play.  I look at it and begin trying to understand what is crucial to telling the story of whoever’s story it is, and then I start X-ing other material out.  And then I try, on the second draft, to literally use only either Jane Austen’s words or her narration.  My desire would be to do it without narration but sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t; but I try in the second draft as I’m cutting it down, I try to do it absolutely from the book.  And then I leave holes where there’s literally nothing she’s written, because I’m scared to write my lines into Austen and would like not to, so I find out exactly where I’m just plain old going to have to write that scene.  Then I mourn my situation, dawdle around and write 5 or 6 lines or write the same scene 6 or 7 times.  Sometimes you literally have to write the scene, or the connective material, so I do that last.  Then I do what anybody does.  You kind of go through it, let it sit for a while, then go through it again.  I probably made 4 or 5 passes through the script, until you sort of arrive at rehearsal.  And that’s how I do it.

Q:  How is it both writing and directing this piece?

A:  I  never found any problem.  Because I can fix things, I’m primarily a director and not an adaptor, it becomes pretty clear to me what isn’t happening theatrically and particularly in an adaptation.  It’s not like I think, “Oh, I don’t want to lose any of my wonderful words.”  Once I have the script, I just try to make it work theatrically as I would with any play.  And then it is possible for me to go home and try to fix something that I screwed up.  But I don’t feel as if I get too close to the material.  This probably is dead wrong, I probably do and I just don’t know it, but I don’t agonize over it at all.  And you can’t help it.  And if you are a director/adaptor, you do adapt toward the strengths of your own abilities as a director.  So I am aware that I’m writing an adaptation for me to direct, not for everybody else to direct.  Later, hopefully, other people will do it.  But I can say, “Oh, I’m good at this kind of thing, so that could be this way,” so you can kind of favor yourself a little bit when you’re a director/adaptor. I think the old idea that you can’t be both the writer and the director has begun to fall by the wayside a little bit.

Q: You’ve had such a prolific career as a writer, and a director, and an adaptor, and an artistic director (as the originating Artistic Director of the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville).  Where are you now in retrospect with all that?

A:  Where I always was, I just like to do plays.  I’m an enthusiast.   And I’ve always loved doing this, and I’ve always felt very privileged to be allowed to do it – that I could get up in the morning and actually do it.  I’m less interested right now in doing contemporary work, only because I did so much of it.  Yes, there are contemporary playwrights I really like: Neil Labute, Sarah Ruhl, Adam Rapp, and Stephen Adly Guirgis, among others.  They are several of their plays that I would love to direct.  I think it’s different when you’re young, because you’re celebrating and trying to figure out your own generation.  But my generation are all playing shuffleboard, so I don’t exactly need to figure them out.  And there is some distance – I’m never going to understand the new generations’ plays in the ways they do.  Because I do think, no matter what you say, as you get older you don’t have the same firm hold on popular culture and younger relationships.  I still have a 20-year-old daughter, and in watching how all that functions, I might as well be on an anthropological trip to Fiji, you know?  So I think you guys should direct your generation’s own work.  And I think probably what us older folks have to offer is a little bit of perspective.  I can understand still enough about what’s going on that I can be interested in what its resonances are in Jane Austen.  Because I look at that and I think, “That’s not so different.”  It’s not a kind of personal ageism that I think I’m only allowed to do older plays, you know, I’ve done a couple of Sarah Ruhl’s lately and I can do that.  But an awful lot of the time I think, yeah I’m doing this, and I’m doing a pretty good job, but I know there are 16 young directors who probably in a certain sense can do this better than I can, or as well.  And it’s their turn, they should do it.

Jon Jory (Playwright, Director) As the Producing Director at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Jon Jory directed over 125 plays and produced over 1,000 during his 32-year tenure. He conceived the internationally lauded Humana Festival of New American Plays, the SHORTS Festival, and the Brown-Forman Classics-in-Context Festival. He was also the Founding Artistic Director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and he has been inducted in New York’s Theatre Hall of Fame.  Mr. Jory has directed professionally in nine nations, and in the United States has directed productions at many regional theatres including Washington’s Arena Stage, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, Hartford Stage, the McCarter in Princeton, Guthrie Theatre, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has received the National Theatre Conference Award and ATA Distinguished Career Award. For his commitment to new plays, he has received the Margo Jones Award twice, the Shubert Foundation’s James N. Vaughan Memorial Award for Exceptional Achievement and Contribution to the Development of Professional Theatre, and the Special Tony Award for Achievement in Regional Theatre.  He was recently inducted into New York’s Theatre Hall of Fame.  He currently teaches acting at Santa Fe University of Art and Design.