The podcast is released on Fridays, 0:01, Japanese Standard Time

Note: we swear a bunch.

In Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers, four readers choose a piece of Victorian-era literature and read it together, guided by our schoolmarm Charlotte Sampson. As we discuss the book in a deep but irreverent manner, we compete for points to see who will be the Teacher’s Pet and who will be the Class Dunce.

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Our theme music was written by Akihiro Akane. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

Our first book is Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and in this episode we break down Chapters 1 – 3.

Miss Charlotte will provide an introduction to the world of Wuthering Heights and the Brontë family; Andrew will present the first “Reader Response” in the form of a set of dialogues and the group will talk about the strange characters; Miss Charlotte will run the first “Cathartic Pop Quiz”; and the first Teacher’s Pet and Class Dunce will be crowned.

This was actually our second try at episode 1, and we’re still working the kinks out of the format, so bear with us. Also, we had a few audio issues that were discovered after the fact, so you’ll notice a few drops in quality near the end of the podcast. This is what happens when you’re trying to get five people to record together from their houses with varying levels of experience with the equipment and software.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

The podcast is released on Fridays, 0:01, Japanese Standard Time

Note: we swear a bunch.

This week, we discuss Chapters 4 – 6 of Wuthering Heights. We cover dogs, and Nelly Dean, and a little bit about Patrick Brontë, Emily’s father.  Juri presents this week’s reader report (a diorama! see photos below!). As always, we do the Cathartic Pop Quiz, and a new Teacher’s Pet and Class Dunce are crowned. Also, stay tuned at the end for a couple of outtakes. Like them? Let us know and we’ll stick one or two at the end of each episode.

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Our theme music was written by Akihiro Akane. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

Want to be a reader for season 2? Use our contact form and get in touch!

Okay, I’m going to stop saying that we release at 0:01 Fridays, Japan time, because realistically, it’s not going to happen. In fact, this episode would not have made it to release until the end of September if Joan Chen hadn’t agreed to take over editing duties from me. So, thanks for your patience. You can expect weekly episodes, but just not maybe on a strict schedule until Season 2, which will undoubtedly (doubtedly) benefit from better planning.

Also, we swear a bunch. As usual.

In this week’s episode, we discuss Chapters 12 – 15 of Wuthering Heights. Andrew gives his report in the form of a religious sermon (delivered by an idiot), Andrew threatens to burn Daniel’s house down during a disagreement on Heathcliff’s relative culpability in the mess that is his relationship with Cathy, and we learn the significance of Heathcliff being “found” in Liverpool particularly.

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.Daniel Wishes, Puppeteer and PodcasterEmi Do, World-changer and marathon runnerJuri Ito, Assistant Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Akihiro Akane wrote our theme song. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

The podcast is edited by Joan Chen.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

P.S. Do you want to join us as a Wayward Reader for our second season? If you think you have what it takes, head over to our contact page and get in touch!

Image below: the comb of Emily Brontë as mentioned in the podcast.

Thanks for your patience over our haitus, and over the fact that we’re again releasing a few days late. Yes, you can expect weekly episodes, but just not maybe on a strict schedule until Season 2, which will undoubtedly (doubtedly) benefit from better planning.

Annnnddddd, be aware that we swear a bunch. What else is new?

In this week’s episode, we discuss Chapters 16 – 19 of Wuthering Heights. Juri gives the report this week, Andrew forgets to raise his hand, Daniel makes more references to 80s newspaper comic strips, and Emi falls asleep.

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Akihiro Akane wrote our theme song. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

The podcast is edited by Andrew Woolner.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

P.S. Do you want to join us as a Wayward Reader for our second season? If you think you have what it takes, head over to our contact page and get in touch!

Still no regular schedule, but Joan Chen will be back next week to edit, so with any luck, this podcast will drop on time for once!

Please take note that we swear in this podcast: particularly in this episode.

In this week’s episode, we discuss Chapters 20 – 23 of Wuthering Heights. Miss Charlotte makes a case for maybe Heathcliff not being quite as evil as we’re led to believe, Emi tells a campfire ghost story, and Andrew gets John Bunyon mixed up with Paul Bunyon (should be a good chuckle for those of you who are fans of The Pilgrim’s Progress).

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Akihiro Akane wrote our theme song. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

The podcast is edited by Andrew Woolner.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

P.S. Do you want to join us as a Wayward Reader for our second season? If you think you have what it takes, head over to our contact page and get in touch!

Okay, we’re officially going bi-weekly on releases until we have some way of cutting down editing time (or adding a dedicated editor). Thanks for being understanding.

Please take note that we swear in this podcast.

In this week’s episode, we discuss Chapters 24 – 26 of Wuthering Heights. We learn about Emily’s time in Brussels; Daniel presents us with some celebrity impressions– although his definition of “celebrity” is different than ours; and Andrew presents the Wuthering Heights version of the “Jar Jar Binks was a Sith lord” theory, which leads us to ponder the lightsaber skills of Lockwood.

The image for this episode is from the plaque erected on the boarding school that Emily and Charlotte briefly attended in Brussels. Below is a street map that shows the location of the school.

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Akihiro Akane wrote our theme song. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

The podcast is edited by Joan Chen.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

P.S. Do you want to join us as a Wayward Reader for our second season? If you think you have what it takes, head over to our contact page and get in touch!

Please take note that we swear in this podcast.

In this week’s episode, we discuss Chapters 27 – 29 of Wuthering Heights. Emi does her very best to do an infomercial, and we don’t know how it went because we’re all focused on her weird accent work; the readers argue over how long it takes a body to decompose under various circumstances; and Miss Charlotte reveals to us that Wuthering Heights is only the SECOND MOST depressing Victorian novel (listen to discover the first most depressing novel).

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Akihiro Akane wrote our theme song. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

The podcast is edited this week by Andrew Woolner.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

P.S. Do you want to join us as a Wayward Reader for our second season? If you think you have what it takes, head over to our contact page and get in touch!

Ugh. If your podcast app auto-downloaded this episode when it dropped, you may want to delete it and re-download. There was a glitch with the first version of the file that was pretty annoying and cut out words here and there.

Please take note that we swear in this podcast.

In this week’s episode, we discuss Chapters 30 – 32 of Wuthering Heights. Emi calls in from a hostel in Toyama, after cycling around 400 kilometers in two days to get there, so you may notice a perceptible drop in her audio quality. In this episode, we talk about beauty contests in Gimmerton, Joseph’s accent, and Lockwood devestatin’ the moors! Woo-hoo! Babes and brewskies! (Not quite.) More seriously, we do a deep dive into parallels between Beauty and the Beast and these chapters of Wuthering Heights. Also stay tuned for the outtakes at the end this week: they include strange noises that Emi was making in Toyama.

Another note: Juri had to drop out of the recording before the cathartic pop quiz. That’s why she’s missing by the end of the episode.

Our wayward readers are:

Andrew Woolner, Artistic Director of the Yokohama Theatre Group.

Akihiro Akane wrote our theme song. You can find out more about him and his work at https://www.instagram.com/ardenaki/ and https://ardenaki.com/. Andrew wrote the words.

Special guest Northern accent David Sagar.

The podcast is edited this week by Andrew Woolner.

Miss Charlotte’s Finishing School for Wayward Readers is an audio production of the Yokohama Theatre Group, or YTG, a non-profit theatre company based in Japan. If you want to support the theatrical work we do, you can head over to ytg.jp and click the support button.

P.S. Do you want to join us as a Wayward Reader for our second season? If you think you have what it takes, head over to our contact page and get in touch!

LINKS

Translations for some of Joseph’s dialogue: https://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/wh/josephs-speech.php

CITATIONS

Williams, Anne. “Natural Supernaturalism in ‘Wuthering Heights.’” Studies in Philology, vol. 82, no. 1, 1985, pp. 104–127.

Please take note that we swear in this podcast.

In this week’s episode, we discuss Chapters 33 and 34 of Wuthering Heights, bringing Emily Brontë’s bleak saga to a close. Andrew paints an idyllic picture of the far-flung future in his reader response, using the most obnoxious sound effect possible. We also have a fun conversation about the cycle of abuse, because Wuthering Heights is depressing to the very end. Miss Charlotte tells us what 19th-century readers REALLY thought of Wuthering Heights, and we discuss Linton Heathcliff’s dirty little secret. Also featured: shrub discourse, Daniel’s obsession with porridge, and the phrase “brain lips.”

THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE! This episode, for no reason, was the hardest to produce so far. Three different editors, malfunctioning software, weird noise issues on the audio tracks, Andrew being buried in producing a show… you name it. Episode 12 has already had a first pass of editing, and we plan to release it and episode 13 over the next two weeks. (In that time, we also plan to start recording Semester 2, with an all-new book and group of readers, so stay tuned.)

Citations