Friday 6th June 2025
Venue: Chawton House
7.30-9pm
Join us on the evening of Friday, 6 June for the world-premiere staged reading of The Austens, a new play by Sarah Rose Kearns.
It’s the spring of 1810 and Jane Austen has sworn off novel-writing. Crushed by the nonpublication of her novel “Susan,” she approaches middle age determined to keep the lid on her ambitions: to take what satisfaction she can in her everyday life as a shabby-genteel spinster, appropriately grateful for the relatively-comfortable home that she shares with her mother, her sister, and their best friend Martha Lloyd . . .
The plan is working, sort of — till the entrance of Anna.
Jane’s niece Anna — 17, troubled, headstrong, and determined to be a writer — gets packed off to Chawton Cottage by her stepmother, after she’s embarrassed the family by breaking an engagement. Anna’s recklessness and daring, her pain and her palpable need of healing stories, gradually revive Jane’s own divine discontent and rekindle her passion for her art — and, ultimately, inspire her with the courage to seek publication for Sense and Sensibility.
Tickets: £10
Notes on performance
– Doors open at 6:30pm; the performance will begin at 7:30pm.
– The performance will last approximately 90 minutes, with no interval.
– The performance will take place inside Chawton House. Please come to the Front Door for entry.
Access
Accessible parking is available in the staff car park at the top of the drive. To reserve an accessible space, or for further information, please call 01420 541010.
Only assistance dogs are permitted at this performance.
Sarah Rose Kearns is a playwright and performer from New York City. She conducted research for The Austens in Chawton and Winchester in 2022 through a grant from The Jane Austen Society of North America. Her stage adaptation of Persuasion debuted off-Broadway in 2021, and will receive a second production at Baltimore’s Chesapeake Shakespeare later this year. Her one-act play Manydown, another biographical drama about the Austen sisters, is currently being developed as a film by Prerna Ramachandra.