Love and Freindship (Dramatic Reading)

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