Abstract
Why are there so many improvised performances based on Austen and Shakespeare? ‘Austentatious, an Improvised Austen Novel’ are a theatrical troupe who regularly stage Austen-inspired stories prompted by the audience—with titles such as Man-Filled Park and Brute and Brutality. Similarly, ‘Impromptu Shakespeare’ invites spectators to throw balls with Shakespearean topoi onto the stage. Those that get caught in one of the actor’s breeches become the building blocks of that night’s performance. And ‘Sh!t-faced Shakespeare’ semi-improvise a Shakespeare play with an inebriated cast member.
This chapter explores this type of spontaneous performance through shows from the Edinburgh Fringe arts festival 2017. It argues that the performative force behind Austen’s and Shakespeare’s texts is one reason behind the success and proliferation of the shows. What is more, in their hyperbolic tendencies, playfulness and collaborative spirit, improv Austen and improv Shakespeare reveal the artificial and constructed nature of what we have culturally come to call Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. On the improvisatory stage, more than anywhere else, the two founding stones of the canon of English literature are exposed as mere fictions.
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Notes
- 1.
Marina Cano, Jane Austen and Performance (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
- 2.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was established in 1947. Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, notes that it initiated the fringe movement, which now encompasses more than 200 fringe festivals around the world. ‘Welcome to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s 70th anniversary programme’ in The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 04–28 August 2017 (Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society 2017), 3.
- 3.
Writer and performer Lee Minora explained that Lady Elizabeth was a mash-up of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf. Cheeks, personal interview with Lee Minora, 7 August 2017, Edinburgh.
- 4.
Austentatious cast members Cariad Lloyd, Rachel Parris and Charlotte Gittins observe that improvised drama has traditionally been seen as a lesser art form in Britain. They speculate this is because audiences either do not believe shows are really improvised or, if they do, dismiss them for that same reason. (‘Is Improv having “a moment”?’ BBC Radio, Comedy of the Week Podcast: Funny in Four, 27 June 2017).
- 5.
See, for instance, Lori Donn’s ‘The Opening Lines of Romeo and Juliet Recited in the Original Accent of Shakespeare’s Time’, Laughing Squid (29 August 2017), https://laughingsquid.com/romeo-juliet-recited-in-original-shakespeare-accent/ [accessed 2 March 2018]; and Alison Flood’s ‘Plagiarism Software Pins down New Source for Shakespeare’s Plays’, The Guardian (9 February 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/09/shakespeare-plagiarism-software-george-north [accessed 2 March 2018].
- 6.
Similarly, in 2015, The Telegraph announced Robert Clark’s discovery of the ‘real’ setting of Austen’s Mansfield Park . See Hannah Furness, ‘Revealed: The Real Inspiration for Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park’, The Telegraph (3 September 2015), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11840461/Revealed-the-real-inspiration-for-Jane-Austens-Mansfield-Park.html [accessed 2 March 2018]. Paula Byrne’s otherwise excellent biography of Austen is titled The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things (London: HarperPress, 2013).
- 7.
For a detailed discussion of how editors have built up the seemingly stable and fixed Austen text, see Kathryn Sutherland’s Jane Austen’s Textual Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
- 8.
The most emphatic examples of textual variation are Richard III and King Lear. In the latter’s case, Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor have even published the play as two different texts: The History of King Lear: The 1608 Quarto (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005/1986) and The Tragedy of King Lear (1610): The Folio Text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005/1986).
- 9.
For an overview of the textual problems around Shakespeare, see, for instance, Barbara Mowat, ‘The Reproduction of Shakespeare’s Texts’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Margreta de Grazia and Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 13–30; and Keir Elman, ‘The Text and Editorial Procedures’ in Twelfth Night, or What You Will, ed. Keir Elman (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2008), 355–79.
- 10.
J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (London: Oxford University Press, 1955/76).
- 11.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990), 180.
- 12.
The pioneers in the study of Austen dramatic influences were Penny Gay and Paula Byrne: Gay, Jane Austen and the Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre (London: Hambledon and London, 2002). More recently, Sayre Greenfield has drawn specific connections between an amateur production of Hamlet and Austen’s theatricals in Mansfield Park : Greenfield, ‘The Source for the Theatricals of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park: A Discovery’, Persuasions 38 (2017): 197–204. For Austen’s theatrical afterlife, see Cano, Jane Austen and Performance.
- 13.
Austentatious, Prude and Incredulous (The Udderbelly: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 10 August 2017, 13.30–14.30).
- 14.
‘Interview: Austentatious’, FreshFringe (August 2016), https://www.mixcloud.com/FreshFringe/interview-austentatious/ [accessed 3 March 2018].
- 15.
Impromptu Shakespeare, personal interview with Ailis Duff and Rebecca Macmillan, 8 August 2017, Teviot House, Edinburgh.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Sh!t-faced Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (The Udderbelly: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 9 August 2017, 22.15–23.15).
- 18.
Austentatious, Jane Austen’s Married to a Cad and Bounder (BBC Radio 4 Extra, 18 June 2017). This is a radio version of the show, commissioned as part of the BBC celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death.
- 19.
Butler , Gender Trouble, 33.
- 20.
Ibid., xv.
- 21.
Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York; London: Routledge, 1993), 256.
- 22.
‘Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel’, The London Jam: Festival of Improvised Comedy & Theatre, 16–22 January 2017 at Wilton’s Music Hall, http://www.thelondonjam.com/the-shows/austentatious-an-improvised-jane-austen-novel/ [accessed 3 March 2018].
- 23.
Sh!t-faced Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (The Udderbelly: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 9 August 2017, 22.15–23.15).
- 24.
Anthony Frost and Ralph Yarrow note that improv is ‘about failing, and about not minding failure. It is about trying again, and about enjoying the process without straining to get a known result.’ Anthony Frost and Ralph Yarrow, Improvisation in Drama (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1990), 3.
- 25.
Impromptu Shakespeare, personal interview.
- 26.
Impromptu Shakespeare (Just the Tonic at the Caves: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 9 August 2017, 13.30–14.30).
- 27.
Of course, an additional ‘error’ here—one that creates parallel, if not totally inexistent, worlds—is the reference to the kingdom of Slovenia, a nation that was not established as an independent country until 1991 and is a republic.
- 28.
Frost and Yarrow, Improvisation in Drama, 45.
- 29.
Impromptu Shakespeare, personal interview.
- 30.
Austentatious regularly post some of these unused titles on their Instagram account. See Austenimpro, https://www.instagram.com/austenimpro/ [accessed 1 January 2018].
- 31.
Unused titles from June 2017, March 2017 and October 2016, respectively.
- 32.
For uses of Austen during World Wars I and II, see Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), chapters 3 and 4; and Cano, Jane Austen and Performance, chapters 3–6.
- 33.
Unused title from December 2016.
- 34.
Sh!t-faced Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (The Udderbelly: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 9 August 2017, 22.15–23.15).
- 35.
Austentatious, Prude and Incredulous (The Udderbelly: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 10 August 2017, 13.30–14.30).
- 36.
Austentatious, Jane Austen’s Married to a Cad and Bounder (BBC Radio 4 Extra, 18 June 2017).
- 37.
Impromptu Shakespeare, personal interview.
- 38.
Impromptu Shakespeare, http://www.impromptushakespeare.com/; Austentatious! An Improvised Novel, https://www.facebook.com/austenimpro/ [accessed 4 March 2018].
- 39.
Austentatious, Jane Austen’s Married to a Cad and Bounder (BBC Radio 4 Extra, 18 June 2017).
- 40.
Butler , Gender Trouble, xxviii.
- 41.
Austentatious, Prude and Incredulous (The Udderbelly: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 10 August 2017, 13.30–14.30).
- 42.
Lee Minora, Cheeks (Silk: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 7 August 2017, 18.20–19.10).
- 43.
Especially in her short story ‘Love and Freindship’ [sic], where the sentimental heroine Laura and her romantic friend Sophia repeatedly faint on the sofa. The literature on Jane Austen and the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility is extensive. See, for instance, Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975/87); Claudia L. Johnson Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); and Clara Tuite, Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 44.
Austentatious, Prude and Incredulous (The Udderbelly: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 10 August 2017, 13.30–14.30).
- 45.
Will Shakespeare’s ImproMusical, Macbeth (SpaceTriplex: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 8 August 2017, 21.05–22.00).
- 46.
Will Shakespeare’s ImproMusical, personal interview with Alan Marriott, 9 August 2017, Teviot House, Edinburgh.
- 47.
Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981), 97, 99.
- 48.
Impromptu Shakespeare (Just the Tonic at the Caves: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 8 August 2017, 13.30–14.30).
- 49.
Butler , Gender Trouble, 175–6.
- 50.
Butler , Bodies That Matter, 125.
- 51.
Impromptu Shakespeare (Just the Tonic at the Caves: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 8 August 2017, 13.30–14.30).
- 52.
Impromptu Shakespeare, personal interview.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Judith Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’ (1991), in The Critical Tradition: Classical Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Ritcher (Boston & New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007), 1707–18, 1713.
- 55.
Butler , Bodies That Matter, 125.
- 56.
‘Will Shakespeare ImproMusical Bounds forth for Fringe’ (4 September 2012), http://www.impromusical.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Shakespeare-ImproMusical-Press-Release.pdf [accessed 28 March 2018].
- 57.
‘Hello Neighbor: Shit-faced Shakespeare’, Somerville Community Access Television (22 March 2016), https://archive.org/details/Hello_Neighbor_-_Shit-faced_Shakespeare [accessed 28 March 2018].
- 58.
‘Shit-faced Shakespeare—Waffle TV @ The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2013’, Waffle TV (Filmed at Pleasance Dome Edinburgh, August 2013).
- 59.
‘Comedy of the Week: Austentatious plus Interview’ (BBC Radio 4, 26 June 2017).
- 60.
Walker, Martin, ‘On the Mic Podcast: Austentatious Interview’ (Broadway Baby Radio, 24 July 2016).
- 61.
‘Comedy of the Week: Austentatious plus Interview’ (BBC Radio 4, 26 June 2017).
- 62.
Austentatious, Jane Austen’s Married to a Cad and Bounder (BBC Radio 4 Extra, 18 June 2017).
- 63.
These are A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night. Titles appear in the ‘Wheel of Will’, which the company spin around every night to select one for performance.
- 64.
Will Shakespeare’s ImproMusical, personal interview.
- 65.
The others are Anton Chekhov, Charles Dickens and Tennessee Williams. Interestingly, Austen is the only female author on their list.
- 66.
‘Jane Austen UnScripted’, http://improtheatre.com/styles/jane-austen-unscripted/; ‘Shakespeare UnScripted’, http://improtheatre.com/styles/shakespeare-unscripted/ [accessed 28 March 2018].
- 67.
‘How to Become a Jane Austen Character’, Series My Friend Jane (BBC One, 14 July 2017).
- 68.
For more on how Austen affects the lives of readers in the twenty-first century, see Cano, Jane Austen and Performance, chapter 8.
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Cano, M. (2019). Austen and Shakespeare: Improvised Drama. In: Cano, M., García-Periago, R. (eds) Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25689-0_11
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