Jane Austen: Who Dares to be an Authoress?
with Actress Laura Rocklyn
Sunday, March 10, 2024 | 3:00 pm
Tickets: $20 General Admission | $10 Student
Online ticketing is now over. Tickets can be purchased at the door.
*A limited number of free tickets for seniors are available, courtesy of the cordelia family foundation.
Generously sponsored by Cheever Tavern.
The year is 1815, and Miss Austen has just returned from a visit to the Prince Regent’s London residence. The honor of this invitation prompts her to reminisce about the events that led the daughter of a country clergyman to a position of such notoriety. She shares her thoughts and feelings about her novels and how their publication changed her life forever.
Playwright and actress Laura Rocklyn portrays Jane Austen, with discussion and Q&A about Regency deportment and etiquette.
About Actress Laura Rocklyn
Laura Rocklyn is an actor, writer, and first person historical interpreter based in Boston, MA. She has performed with regional theater companies across the country where favorite shows have included Pride & Prejudice at Round House Theatre; Sense & Sensibility at The Folger Theatre; As You Like It at Kentucky Shakespeare; The Glass Menagerie, The Winter's Tale and A Tale of Two Cities at The Classic Theatre of Maryland; Richard III and Twelfth Night at the Richmond Shakespeare Festival; I Now Pronounce You Lucy Stone, How Long Must We Wait? and Cato & Dolly: A New American Play for History At Play; and Wild Oats, Red Velvet (2018 BroadwayWorld Baltimore Award for Best Actress in a Play) and A Christmas Carol (2014, '15, '16) at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, where she is also a teaching artist. She has been seen on TV in Legends & Lies: The Patriots and on Investigation Discovery: Southern Fried Homicide.
Laura writes and performs one-woman historic character portrayals for educational groups up and down the East Coast. She presented her one-woman play Charlotte Brontë: To Do More and Better Things as a part of the North American Friends of Chawton House 2021 Speaker Subscriptions Series, and her original short play Emma is Presented in Washington City premiered as the curtain raiser for the Jane Austen Society of North America 2016 Annual General Meeting. Clover, a bio-drama based on the life of Marian “Clover” Adams, which Laura co-wrote with Ty Hallmark, was produced by Ally Theatre Company.
Laura has published short stories in the literary journals “Stork” and “New Square,” and she was the winner of the "LitMag" 2021 Virginia Woolf Award for short fiction. She has published nonfiction articles in “Brontë Studies” and on “The Revere Express”
Laura holds an MFA from The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at The George Washington University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, a Shakespeare Certificate from The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and a BA in Theatre and English Literature from Middlebury College.
