Hello friends,

We’re so happy to be able to share this conversation with the co-creators of the Rational Creatures YouTube series that retells the story of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

Inspired by that viral video sensation known as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, aka LBD, Rational Creatures is powered by crowd-funding, inspiration, and friendship. Series co-creators Ayelen Barrios Ruiz Pagano, Jessamyn Leigh, Hazel Jeffs, and Anya Steiner bonded over their love of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and their passion for seeing classic stories retold in contemporary settings. 

Jessamyn Leigh created a series called Twincidents based on Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, and Hazel Jeffs created Away From it All, a retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Maddening Crowd - all four women worked on these projects together while dream-scaping a Persuasion retelling. And then they found themselves crowd-funding it, and producing it. 

Rational Creatures is powered by crowd-funding, inspiration, and friendship.

Ayelen and Jessamyn told us that in this series the characters are remade to look more like their friends: They’re working, they’re dating, they’re LGBT, they’re diverse, and of course they’re pining extravagantly.

For this episode of the Austen Connection podcast we caught up with Ayelen Barrios Ruiz Pagano, who spoke to us from Toronto, and Jessamyn Leigh in Oregon. We talked about Jane Austen’s classic story of Persuasion, the characters of Anne Elliot, and Frederick Wentworth, and putting it all into a contemporary retelling with Rational Creatures. 

You can follow the conversations about the series, the characters, and new episodes as they drop on the Rational Creatures series Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and of course on YouTube where you can see all the episodes as they drop - for free.

Have you watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries or any other YouTube retellings of classic literature?

Let us know your favorite characters, favorite themes, and favorite series here at the Austen Connection: https://austenconnection.substack.com/

Enjoy!

More viewing and listening: Check out the wonderful trove of contemporary YouTube series that remix classic literature, many of them created by women. The Rational Creatures team has worked on a few of them together, including Jessamyn Leigh’s Twincidents based on Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, and Hazel Jeffs’ Away From it All, a retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Maddening Crowd. Enjoy!

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