Festival Director – 2016 Festival

Welcome to the 16^th Jane Austen Festival in Bath with old favourites and some exciting new events and venues for you to discover. We are delighted this year to be working with the Abbey Hotel in North Parade. Not only are they a venue for three brand new events, they are also offering a very special food deal on Sunday 11^th (see events for details). In addition during the Festival, anyone producing a ticket or in costume will receive a 10% discount on other purchased beverages. This makes it a great place to meet up and have one of their very special cocktails created for the Festival, we are really looking forward to trying the Northangover Abbey!
Sense & Sensibility which achieved its bicentenary in 2011 is celebrated this year with readings in Bath Central Library, the superb soprano Rosie Lomas exploring music and love in the novel and the Theatre Royal outing to Mompesson House in Salisbury where Emma Thompson’s production was filmed.
The Grand Regency Costumed Promenade starts and finishes at the Upper Rooms, as they were called when Austen live in Bath. Better known today as The Assembly Rooms, they are the venue for the popular Festival Fayre which, apart from its stalls of Regency clothing and accessories, is also where you can have your palm read and silhouette cut. If you have ever wondered how to cut a silhouette why not try for yourself at the workshop on Sunday 11^th.
Bath is full of beautiful buildings (Dr Amy Frost talks about some of them in her presentation at the Bath Museum of Architecture) and one such is the hidden gem of Cleveland Pools – we learn all about the country’s only surviving Georgian lido with Guide Sally Helvey.
It might be September but we are getting ready for Christmas in Regency times with a workshop on how to prepare your home plus a musical recital in the festive drawing room. Music runs in the family as the Danish trio, sisters Anna and Giuly and mother Maria Johannsen prove with their recital ‘Your concerto, Miss Austen!’
Dance workshops are of course an essential part of the Festival and all are being held in new venues. The Jane Austen Dancers celebrate fans and 1816, while Diana Campbell instructs in the 18^th Century Waltz and calls at our two Balls: The Middleton Country Dance on Promenade Saturday and the unique and very popular Masked Ball in the Pump Rooms.
Talks include the Clergy with Lynette White, Beckford’s Tower, Jane Austen’s Wardrobe, a Milliner’s Tale, Female Spa-visiting, Discomforts of Bath and the welcome return of Professor John Mullan on Sense & Sensibility. Other workshops are on making masks and Regency etiquette plus finding out what happened on the film set of ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ from a man who knows!
The Festival is pleased to welcome back Tin Roof Productions with their musical version of Pride and Prejudice (especially written for us) and thrilled that the Natural Theatre Company have returned with their very own hilarious piece of street theatre ‘Austen Undone!’ On the last evening, the Naturals are also presenting the brand new improvisation ‘An Austen Dilemma!’. The 2016 Festival has a packed programme with something for everyone.
I look forward to seeing you at the Festival.
With very best wishes
Jackie Herring – Festival Director