Anne Brontë takes centre stage in Live Five show

Charlotte Brontë changed the literary world when she published Jane Eyre. Emily Brontë did the same with Wuthering Heights. And Anne Brontë … was their lesser-known younger sister, often reduced to a footnote in the story of her sisters’ lives.

A new play by Saskatoon playwright Johanna Arnott puts the third Brontë sister back in the spotlight, embracing her legacy as a feminist, a teacher and a radically inventive poet and novelist working on her own terms.

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Arnott began writing the play in 2018, as she was leaving university and entering the world of professional theatre.

Arnott had played Anne Brontë in another show during her undergraduate degree, and in her research to prepare for the role, had become frustrated by the way artists and biographers consistently gave the youngest Brontë sister the short end of the stick.

“In a lot of biographies of the Brontë sisters, she’s described as the quiet younger sister who was ‘along for the ride,’ rather than also being someone who was also pursuing being a writer, who was also adventurous,” said Arnott.

“The title of my play, A Brontë Without Genius, is actually a direct quote from one of those books I read, describing how Anne could be measured up against her sisters’ genius — like them, but not with them.

“I started writing the play as a way of defending her honour, and quickly found a way of defending mine and that of other young artists, too.”

Arnott soon discovered that writing about Anne Brontë was a challenge — especially since so little information about her life had survived after her death.

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“I struggled with how to tell the story honestly and truthfully, when what we know about Anne is so little,” she recalled. “If all the facts we know for sure about Anne Brontë were written down, it would fit on a single page. That’s all that remains of her life. So how do I, then, tell a story about her without making things up? And what I’m trying to fight against, in my writing, is the things other people have made up about her.”

Arnott had become fascinated by Anne Brontë’s writing — particularly her 1848 novel, The Tenant of WIldfell Hall, which tells the story of a woman escaping an abusive marriage to protect herself and her son and build a new and better life.

“It’s a revolutionary feminist novel,” said Arnott. “And the idea that this woman would be so quiet and sensitive and unopinionated, and then go and write a novel that was so bold and rejected the norms of her world, just didn’t quite match up.”

To bring the story to the stage, Arnott created the character of Lucy, a present-day scholar who has, like Arnott herself, spent years researching Anne Brontë.

“On the night that Lucy fails to defend her master’s thesis, Anne Brontë appears to her on the staircase in her office, and the two of them go on a whirlwind journey of exploring what it means to be an artist, what it means to fail as an artist, what it means to have your work critiqued, and how to push through that and stay honest and truthful to yourself,” said Arnott.

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Over the years, the play has gained another layer of meaning in Arnott’s life. It mirrors her creative journey from her student days to the founding of her own theatre company, Planter Box Theatre, which is producing this show as its “first step out into the world,” she said.

“The play has grown up with me; it changed as I changed. As I learned and grew and adapted what kind of artist I was, so did Lucy. So did Anne. And so did the story.”

Sound and prop designer Grahame Kent said Arnott’s hard work, reconstructing Anne Brontë’s life and character from details, fragments and educated guesses, has created an unmissable show.

“What’s really exciting about the show is that it’s a new work — it’s a world premiere — which is something that Live Five has been doing lots of for the last 20 years,” he said. “And on top of that, it’s by a brilliant young playwright.”

Whether her audiences are full of diehard Brontë fans or are meeting Anne Brontë for the first time on stage, Arnott said they will leave the theatre embraced by a message of love, creativity and the inherent value of an artistic life.

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“I can’t wait for audiences to fall in love with Anne and maybe be inspired to write a poem, write a book, do something fun and creative just for themselves,” she said. “That would be my ultimate dream.”

A Brontë Without Genius runs from Jan. 18 to 21 at The Refinery in Saskatoon.

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