PENNY ASHTON AUTHOR

Ōtautahi’s own Penny Ashton has been touring the world for over 20 years, having performed over 1,000 solo shows and selling out from Edinburgh to Edmonton to Mosgiel. She has represented New Zealand in Theatresports and performed Slam Poetry at The Glastonbury Festival. In 2008 she devised the improvised Austen Found: The Undiscovered Musicals of Jane Austen and her happy collaboration with Austen began. In 2013 she wrote her first solo Austen musical Promise and Promiscuity and later, her Dickensian romp, Olive Copperbottom.

These literary musicals continue to tour successfully, including a 2023 10th anniversary tour for Promise and Promiscuity, no doubt surprising the University of Canterbury where she dropped her English major ASAP after her first classes. Penny is also a social commentator and wedding celebrant and is currently writing The Tempestuous, a new solo Shakespearean comedy. She would like to thank her Mum and Dad for all those tickets to The Court Theatre in the 1980s.

Writer’s Note on the Play

“When asked to adapt a classic for The Court I knew it had to be Sense and Sensibility as I have always loved its eloquence, romance and hilarious spinster shade. So I set about transferring all of that onto six women who will play 22 of Austen’s beautifully drawn characters.

I chose to write this for women only as an homage to the brilliant Jane herself, who struggled her whole adult life to be published due to her sex. When she was finally published in 1811 aged 35, her name was not listed as the author, it being unseemly for a gentlewoman. By 1815 even the Prince Regent was a fan, but by 1817 she was dead. Her gravestone does not even mention her books.

And so I choose women to celebrate Austen, who was denied so much because she was one. And I cannot wait to see this glorious cast and crew bring her wit and sparkle to life.”