As yet another themed improv show approaches my thoughts once more return to the charming world of Jane Austen. We have performed Austen Found: The Undiscovered Musicals of Jane Austen numerous times in the past 3 years in climes as varied as Adelaide, Wellington and Whakatane. And on Friday we shall be daintily treading the boards again but this time in a far more hostile environment.

This time there will be Zombies.

As they said on True Blood last night “Zombies are the new Vampires” and it’s true as they seem to have slimed up everywhere. Whether is be in Zomburlesque last week in Wellington, to taking over America in the Walking Dead to enmeshed in the pages of Pride and Prejudice by Seth Grahame-Smith.

If you weren’t aware the latter is a booked penned by Mr Smith which is 85% Jane Austen’s original P&P words and 15% Zombies. This idea of his has spawned a book option and the movie is in the pre-production stages with actresses from Emma Stone to Scarlett Johansson to Natalie Portman supposedly vying to wear Elizabeth Bennett’s bonnet complete with hidden samurai sword.

Many Janeites (as Ms Austen’s rabid fanbase are called) are up in arms at this prospect BUT we thought it was freakin hilarious and decided to adapt it to the stage dahhhhlink.

And our rehearsal yesterday was hilarious but it did get me thinking.

As a Regency woman of good breeding your life was totally fucking boring. You couldn’t say things like totally fucking boring, you had to align yourself to a man in order to survive due to entailment laws based on patriarchy, you were expected to cross-stitch and accomplish yourself with other accomplishments like learning French (which is curious as they were constantly at war with them), you have to play the pianoforte even if you had no musical aptitude, you had to learn musical aptitude, blah blah blah blah blah.

You could at least show a little cleavage unlike the Victorians to come BUT if you flashed an ankle you were the world’s biggest slut, to be overly educated was frowned upon as you might show up how dumb the boys were, Balls were the only thing to really look forward to, you had to marry people you didn’t like because class meant everything and the most galling to me, you had to have a chaperone.

I mean what the fuck. A chaperone!!! As a single girl I wanted a male chaperone quite a lot, especially after a few sauvignon blancs, I would have liked to be chaperoned quite hard, but to not be able to go out alone as the independent girl I am, well that would have earned a few “totally fucking boring”s at my beleaguered Pappa as I flashed my ankles and wore Capri pants to boot.

I like to think I would have been a trail blazer for women’s rights if I had been alive 200 years ago, and yes this was ONLY 200 years ago, but who knows what stifling constraints would have suffocated me. BUT I fancy the addition of Zombies to a Regency Lady’s life complete with Oriental Training, stiletto daggers and decapitation training would have meant things were a little less boring for a while.

And I know it will be very non-boring onstage.

Austen Found: Zombie Time. 9pm, Q Loft, October 21^st. Book at www.qtheatre.co.nz