New Bronte Play at Utah Festival

A new play about the Brontes will be workshopped at the New American Playwrights Project in Utah. The play is called 'The Moor Lark' and centres around Branwell:

"The Moor Lark," by Jan Henson Dow of Bluffton, S.C., and directed by Metten, is set in the isolated village of Haworth, where the Bronte sisters — Charlotte, Emily and Anne — create their imaginative writings while their distraught brother, Branwell, turns to alcohol and opium to numb the jealousy of his sisters' growing fame as novelists and poets. Performances will be Aug. 24-25 and Sept. 1. All readings are 10:15 a.m.

Audience feedback during the first two readings is often incorporated into the plays by the authors prior to the final readings.

There is an admission fee of $5.00 to the festival. Hopefully there is some interesting device included in the plot to explain how Branwell came to know about their fame, since from all accounts he was kept ignorant of their novels. Also he had already turned to alcohol and opium by the time the books were written. Moving his crisis means Tenant of Wildfell Hall would have a different genesis as well...