Across four seasons, playwright and director KJ Sanchez has been especially prolific. Since 2013, she has staged memorable and varied productions including the world premiere of Martín Zimmerman’s searing Seven Spots on the Sun (2013), set in a violence-torn Central American nation, and Jeffrey Hatcher’s Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club (2014). She has excelled at shows featuring fascinating women — David Ives’ lusty battle of the sexes, Venus in Fur (2014), and Laura Eason’s contemporary tale of literary intrigue, Sex with Strangers (2015).
Sanchez’s contribution to this season is to stage the current mainstage production of Charlotte Brontë’s romantic novel Jane Eyre. Published in 1847, it has captivated readership for more than a century and a half. The tale has inspired 20 films, three musicals, two operas, two ballets, a symphony and more.
Sanchez is using British playwright Polly Teale’s stage adaptation, a rendition that distills the novel’s most crucial events. The production uses music, movement and choreography to creatively tell the Victorian story of love on the moors of Northern England. Jane is a simple but feisty young woman who transcends the tragedies of her troubled childhood as an orphan to become a governess at a mysterious estate where she falls in love with its enigmatic lord, Edward Fairfax Rochester. But her new life is threatened by social inferiority and gender inequality. Her relationship with Rochester requires her to find her way through moral challenges.
Sanchez’s artistic design team and actors are bringing elements of their own creativity to the production of this Gothic story. The actors will play musical instruments, and sound designer Jane Shaw has written original music for the show.
Sanchez first read Brontë’s novel when she was 13. “It honestly changed my life,” she says. “Jane was a heroine altogether different from any I had encountered. She was smart and strong and not afraid to speak her mind. She was most comfortable in nature, least comfortable when required to be charming. In fact, she’s reviled, punished and mistreated because she is ‘plain’ — yet Jane is essentially downright beautiful, but (she was) hated because her beauty is unique and doesn’t fit what is expected by social norms.”
Sanchez is excited to use Teale’s adaptation. “It’s a wonderful invitation to be as creative as I like,” she says. “Polly and I had a great meeting over Skype — she lives in London — and she invited me to bring my own style to the work. She’s done an incredible job with the text, distilling the book, finding the most essential moments.”
Sanchez is herself a much produced director and a playwright. In 2016, she participated in the Orchard Project in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., a laboratory program where new shows are developed and refined. She worked there on Cincinnati King, a script commissioned by the Playhouse in 2013. The community-based play about Cincinnati’s legendary Syd Nathan and his label, King Records, was presented in a staged reading in Washington Park in 2015. It celebrates the legacy of the recording studio where James Brown began his career. The work was compiled from transcripts of interviews with nearly 50 people across Greater Cincinnati, as well as newspaper clippings and books about King Records.
During the Orchard Project, Sanchez adapted her previous draft, adding more songs and turning the show into more of a musical. This coming fall, the Playhouse will give Sanchez’s script an extended workshop and prepare it for a potential production.
Sanchez recently moved to Austin, Texas to head up the directing program at the University of Texas. Her experience as a playwright and director has significantly enhanced Cincinnati’s theater scene with offerings ranging from classical literature to Pop music. It’s a surprising array of subjects, but you can be sure KJ Sanchez will make every project fascinating.
JANE EYRE is on stage at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park through April 8. More info: cincyplay.com.
