Adapting Lady Susan: Interview with Creation Theatre's CEO and Artistic Director Helen Eastman

“She is clever and agreeable, has all that knowledge of the world ... which is too often used ... to make black appear white.” — Catherine Vernon, Letter 6

Creation Theatre is celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth with a quirky adaptation of her epistolary novella Lady Susan, available to watch online from anywhere in the world. For over 25 years Creation Theatre has created award-winning adaptations of beloved classic stories, both in-person and online.

Audiences will receive one short film a day, spread across 41 days (September 22- November 1)- a playful tribute to Lady Susan's epistolary format. You can watch one film a day, catch up if you get behind, or binge watch all forty one videos at the end. If you're interested in experiencing Lady Susan in a unique way, you can purchase tickets here.

Without further ado we'd like to introduce Dr Helen Eastman, Creation Theatre's tireless CEO and Artistic Director.

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What is your role with Creation Theatre? What are your general duties and responsibilities?

I’m Helen, and I’m the Artistic Director at Creation Theatre, as well as the CEO. I lead the company creatively – choosing which productions we programme and which artists and performers we collaborate with, which is a huge privilege. I also head up the company and our incredible team. We are a charity, producing theatre, film, and a large education and outreach programme for young people. As we have no regular funding, fundraising is also a major part of my role.

Why did Creation Theatre choose to adapt Lady Susan? What was the thought process behind the format?

Well, a lot of stars aligned with this choice. One of the things we specialize in is adapting novels for performance. As it is Austen’s 250th anniversary (and I’m a massive fan), we wanted to include some of her work in our 2025 season. I was rereading all the novels and spent some time with Lady Susan (what an amazing book and character), wondering if there might be an interesting – and uniquely ‘Creation’ - way to adapt an epistolary novel. At the same time, I was thinking about our wider – international – audience.

For 29 years we’ve been a place-based company, in Oxfordshire, making work for our incredibly loyal local audience. Then, during the pandemic, when all theatres in the UK were closed, my predecessor Lucy Askew programmed some extraordinary digital theatre online. We won numerous awards and gained another, entirely new audience – all over the world. Now we’re back to creating in-person work, but we still try to make one digital production a year. So I wondered whether Lady Susan should be that digital production – and whether we could give it a unique format that truly reflected the original form.

I thought that perhaps if we released one letter a day to our audience – performed by our phenomenal actors – they could experience the novel over a period of time, like a serialization or an epistolary back-and-forth. And it could drop straight into their inbox – which feels like the modern equivalent of receiving a letter.

Simone McIntyre who plays Mrs. Vernon

What is your personal reader experience with Austen’s works in general and Lady Susan specifically?

I voraciously read most of Austen as a teenager. Emma was my favorite when I was fourteen. That’s shifted during different phases of my life – I think that might be true for many readers. I studied Austen during my undergraduate degree (I read Classics and English at Oxford), where we explored the social phenomena of the novel, the limited options open to women who wrote, and the letter as a literary form. All of that brought me back to Lady Susan.

Do you think that Lady Susan is important to Austen’s canon?

Absolutely. We see Austen developing her witty style in Lady Susan and experimenting with capturing characters’ voices and unique forms of expression. For me, one of the most important aspects is her willingness to create an unlikeable heroine – full of folly and faults. It’s refreshing and brave to write a difficult, cantankerous, morally questionable (and middle-aged!) lead character, who goes beyond the ‘merry widow’ cameo. And to write a mother who is not maternal – who, in the patriarchal structures of her society, sees herself as in competition with her daughter.

There’s a feminist bravado (anachronistic though that label may be) in a character who finds herself a penniless widow – societally a dead end for a woman – and then tries to turn that situation to her advantage. There’s a strong argument that Austen was influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Whether or not that’s true, Lady Susan raises vital questions about what options women had if they found themselves widowed – and it asks those questions in a wholly unsentimental way. Austen never writes another character quite like Lady Susan, certainly not in a central role.

Alix Dunmore, who plays Lady Susan, reclining on a chaise and cinematographer, Ed White. 

What do you hope viewers gain from your production?

I hope they thoroughly enjoy these brilliant characters being brought to life, and relish the experience of living with this story over the course of 41 days. Watching one letter a day, I hope their daily lives are punctuated by thoughts of “what might Lady Susan have said today?” or smirks as they recall one of her brilliant lines or outrageous statements.

How do you feel your production will contribute to honoring Austen’s legacy?

We’ve made this production with absolute love for Austen’s work, and a belief in its enduring humanity and relevance. Our aim is to honor her sharp wit, her fearless experimentation with form, and her ability to capture the complexities of human behavior. By adapting Lady Susan in a way that reflects its original structure while opening it up to a global, digital audience, I hope we’re both celebrating Austen’s legacy and inviting new readers and viewers to discover her.

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Don't forget to purchase your tickets for Creation Theatre's production of Lady Susan!

Purchase Tickets Here