JASP 2025: Interview with Lori Mulligan-Davis

In anticipation of JASP 2025 we’ll be interviewing our esteemed staff and speakers. This year’s four-day symposium, JASP 2025: Sensibility and Domesticity, will take place June 19-22, 2025, in historic New Bern, North Carolina. We'll be focusing on Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, and considering the birth of her career as a published author and taking a transatlantic look at the world into which she was born. Program topics include medicine, birth, and domestic arts in Regency England and colonial North Carolina. We’ll be covering the aforementioned topics and celebrating Austen’s 250th birthday through a wide range of activities including workshops, small-group discussions, and workshops. And of course, our Regency Ball is an event not to be missed!

Our next interviewee is JASP 2025 volunteer and past JASP attendee, Lori Mulligan Davis. She will be introducing the movie screening of Paul Gordon's 'Sense and Sensibility: the Musical'.

Have you previously attended JASP? Which years? 

JASP  ’16, ’17, ’19, virtual ’21, ’22, ’23

What is your JASP 2025 role? 

I'm facilitating the Friday-night viewing party of Paul Gordon's Sense and Sensibility musical. I love theater—and Austen adaptations, especially—so I’ve seen at least 27 adaptations of Austen novels on stage. I can say Paul Gordon’s S&S is by far one of the best. Theater is all about experiencing a story in the moment. But once that moment is over, once the sets are dismantled and the actors scatter, that moment can’t be recaptured. I keep a list of productions I’d love to see again. Paul Gordon’s S&S was on that list! I even flew from Chicago to San Diego to see Chicago Shakespeare perform it "just one more time," and I became dramaturg (Austen consultant) for its second production, at Harper College, to see it develop from page to stage. Believe me, I shrieked, eyes wide, when I heard that the Chicago Shakespeare premiere had been pro-filmed and was about to be streamed!

Which JASP 2025 activities are you most looking forward to? 

I look forward to JASP all year long, because I love its truly unique mix of scholarship and fun! My favorite JASP activity is always the Context Corner Discussion Group. I’ve learned so much through these sharing times. I hope for lively discussion after we experience the Paul Gordon musical together. Private viewing is fun, but being part of an audience that gets all the inside jokes and the nuances is the best way to experience Austen.

Why should people read Sense and Sensibility?

It’s a story that can be enjoyed on so many levels! It’s not just a mini-series-worthy novel, it’s a story well told. Lately, I’ve been teaching writers how to pull back the curtain to reveal the true nature of a character. Austen, of course, is a master of this. When seen through Marianne’s eyes, Colonel Brandon starts out as the flannel-cocooned golden-ager, but he proves himself the burdened romantic hero—in fact, he’s the only guy in Austen we hear has fought a duel! I love how Dr. Joan Klingel Ray helps us see Brandon (and Edward Ferrars) for who they are in her JASNA article “The Amiable Prejudices of a Young [Writer’s] Mind: The Problems of Sense and Sensibility”. I shared this article with the cast of Harper College production. When we enjoy Paul Gordon’s musical of Sense and Sensibility together at JASP, I hope there’s a collective sigh as Brandon sings “Wrong Side of Five and Thirty.” If you want to hear Sean Allan Krill sing it now, YouTube is at your service!

Film stills from Sense and Sensibility (1995)

What do you enjoy most about Sense and Sensibility?

I love S&S for its endearing story and for characters who amuse and inspire! For instance, we see Fanny Dashwood performing Olympic-quality mental gymnastics to stamp out every spark of her husband’s resolve to fulfill the deathbed promise he made his father. What started as ongoing maintenance of his sisters eventually becomes seasonal “presents of fish and game.” (Personal fave: How she uses the fact they have only one son as a reason to withhold money, rather than a reason they can afford to share the inheritance!) Fanny helps John believe their own expenses are crushing but his stepmother and half-sisters can live on air.  We can only laugh at the irony when Fanny says, “Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?—They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give you something.” (Chapter 2). In refreshing contrast, we get to know Elinor Dashwood, whose motto could be “absorb chaos, give back calm, provide hope.”

Film still from Sense and Sensibility (1995)

What do you love about Jane Austen and her works? 

I love Jane Austen because I dearly love to laugh. And because her characters are realistic to their time, yet timeless. My proof? Chicago Shakespeare Theater set Paul Gordon’s Emma musical squarely in the Regency. The streaming version has a Mid-Century Modern set and MCM costumes, yet Austen’s words and characters still ring true.

Indeed, I recognize Austen characters in myself and others wherever I go. I’d love a phone app that senses which Austen characters my friends and I are channeling in the moment. Something like Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorder in Star Trek that can diagnose a person in seconds. Alas, the app will probably show I spend my days cycling between the three Ward sisters—nitpicky Mrs. Norris, indolent Lady Bertram, or bustling, inefficient Mrs. Price. I want to be wise-yet-goodhearted Jane Bennet! 

Why should people attend JASP?

JASP is the perfect place to find likeminded BFFs, feel pampered by the many charming extras, and fixate on Austen in a relaxed, supportive setting. JASP has become necessary to my happiness . . . and I want everyone to be as happy as I am.

Lori's Bio: Words, words, words. That pretty much sums up Lori Mulligan Davis. A reader, writer, freelance editor, and book coach, Lori’s sure that a favorite project will ever be Brenda Cox’s Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England. Though Lori has been a magazine managing editor, curriculum writer, academic-press editor, online theater reviewer, and museum educator at the Naper Settlement, the Zenith of her life was speaking at the 2022 Jane Austen Summer Program on “‘I Was Quiet, But I Was Not Blind’: Sight and Silence in King Lear and Mansfield Park” and being Professor Kevin Long’s dramaturg for his production of the Paul Gordon musical Sense and Sensibility at Harper College. A former publicity director of JASNA-Greater Chicago Region, she’s current president of the Chicago region of American Christian Fiction Writers and enjoys leading writing workshops for professional writers, educators, and teens.

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Your donations support all of our programming for the annual Jane Austen Summer Program and Jane Austen & Co. They also help with our community efforts, including student writing contests and continuing education for high school teachers, through scholarships to JASP and our new initiative JASP+. Contributing to this fund will help us keep our costs and the ticket prices as low as possible. It will also help ensure that JASP continues to exist in future years.

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JASP 2025 is partially supported by a grant from NC Humanities.