2/3/2014 12:00:00 AM

Jane Jones, artistic director and co-founder of Seattle’s Book-It Repertory, has been staging works of literature for 25 years and has adapted, directed and performed works by Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, , Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Daphne du Maurier, and Jane Austen. A veteran actress, she has played leading roles for many prominent regional theatres including The Guthrie Theater, American Conservatory Theater, The McCarter Theater and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Jones will visit us as a 2014 Rankin Scholar in Residence on Feb. 22 at 8:30 p.m. in the URBN Annex Black Box Theater for a reading of her adaption of the Dickens classic, A Tale of Two Cities. Drexel students will work with Jones and actress Kate Czajkowski, a Book-It veteran currently with the Wilma Theater, who will teach students how to adapt novels into plays in the “Book-It style.” 

Book-It Repertory is a non-profit dedicated to transforming great literature into great theatre through simple and sensitive production and to inspiring its audiences to read. “Book-It style” preserves the author's exact words in the script rather than changing them for stage. The words and phrases used in the book are acted out in dialogue on-stage, including descriptions. Book-It Style doesn't use a narrator but instead employs characters to elucidate descriptions and inner thoughts,. Click here for more information.