Adaptation: From Page to Stage with Shake & Stir Theatre Co | Digital Stage

Director: Nelle Lee

What survives the journey from novel to stage — and what has to be let go? Shake & Stir Theatre Co Artistic Director, actor and creative Nelle Lee takes us inside the company's process of adapting one of English literature's most loved novels. It begins with a high-school reading of Jane Eyre and an immediate pull towards Charlotte Brontë's style and her rendering of Jane's inner thoughts — a book that, as Lee puts it, means something different depending on where you are in your life. That admiration turns out to be the hardest part. Fitting everything in is the central challenge of any adaptation, and being a devoted fan of the source only sharpens it. The guiding principle is integrity rather than literalism: not slavish fidelity to period language or to exactly what a character would have worn in Victorian England, but faithfulness to what the book represents. Lee lands on a practical test for what makes a novel adaptable — tension. Brontë writes tension inside Jane, and Shake & Stir bring it into the open by externalising the voices in Jane's head and giving them to actors, so the pressure between what Jane feels and what society expects of her plays out on stage. Not every great novel makes a brilliant stage play; the ones worth adapting are those whose characters' journeys are dramatic and visceral — rewarding to watch, and rewarding to produce. Essential viewing for anyone studying adaptation, writing for performance, or curious about how a classic finds new life in the theatre.