Live Wire & Roughhouse Theatre’s critically acclaimed production of Charlotte Bronte’s timeless classic Jane Eyre: an autobiography is coming to the Marine Theatre Lyme Regis on 9th October marking a deeply poignant anniversary in the great novelist’s life.

200 years ago in the Spring of 1825, when Charlotte was only nine years of age, both her older sisters - Maria and Elizabeth - died of consumption within weeks of each other at just 10 & 11 years old respectively.

As Director Shane Morgan explains “there is no doubt whatever that the devastating impact of Maria and Elizabeth’s deaths at just 10 & 11 years old respectively was key to the germination of the Jane Eyre whose orphaned heroine endures childhood loss, rejection and isolation as she embarks on her quest for familial love and somewhere to belong.

Adapted by award winning playwright Dougie Blaxland and produced by the same creative team that won the 2021 National Campaign for the Arts Award Live Wire & Roughhouse Theatre’s Jane Eyre: an autobiography is in fact a revival of the 2015 production that was hailed “a theatrical tour de force from a company with a rare gift for bringing classics to life with loyalty, energy and intrigue”.

Central to bringing Jane Eyre: an autobiography back to the stage 178 years after its original publication is what Movement Director Moira Hunt describes as “its compelling relevance for women in the 21st Century” arguing that “Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre broke the mould of the Victorian female stereotype through its dramatisation of a woman of independent mind and means who refuses to be subservient in any way to her male counterparts.”

Alison Campbell - a graduate of the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School - is delighted to be reprising her role as Jane Eyre and believes that “the revival of the production to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the death of Maria & Elizabeth Bronte is of great significance in honouring the extraordinary Bronte family as a whole and highlighting the creative genius that emerged in the face of tragedy.”

Jane Eyre: an autobiography opens at Phoenix Arts Bordon on 23rd September and closes at The Ustinov Studio Bath from 13th to 15th October.

The full schedule: