By Danielle Mages Amato

Composer Curtis Moore and Lyricist Amanda Green. Photo by Rita Corona.

What have been some of the big surprises creating Regency Girls?

Curtis Moore (CM): Watching performers and artists become involved with the show, and seeing how much the subject matter really affects and touches and speaks to them. Being in a room with so many women discussing these issues has been enlightening. There’s so much I had taken for granted. A key thing we wanted to do with this piece is normalize talking about issues that relate to women’s health. A lot of people don’t want to talk about these things, and that avoidance is part of the problem.

What are the benefits of setting this story in this particular period? Were there tropes you wanted to play with or subvert?
Amanda Green (AG): There are so many rules in the Regency period. It’s such a repressive society that it allows us something to fight against. It’s not like a contemporary comedy where everything’s hanging out and anything goes. In the Regency period,
everybody had to act in a very regimented way, but inside they had the same feelings and desires we do.

CM: I think it allows us to explore the depths of what these women are going through, but using the tropes that we already know about Jane Austen and Regency era helps the audience quickly understand the world. We don’t have to spend time explaining things because people already have a built-in vocabulary for it. One of the things that made me laugh from day one was the idea of a Regency era road trip—a carriage trip.

AG: Yes, we imagined the characters setting off, and nine hours later, they’re like, ‘I can still see my house!’ We also had fun being contemporary but keeping it in that Jane Austen world. For example, Curtis wanted it to sound like a Jane Austen musical at first, then turn into something completely outlandish and modern as the women are becoming more free and the story opens up.

CM: We really go all over the place with the score. Obviously even the songs that have a Regency feel are not Regency era songs; they’re musical theatre songs, even if they have a period feeling. But what’s been fun is that we’re breaking the rules so often. When the characters speak, they’re mostly speaking in period dialogue, but some of the songs are completely anachronistic, and that’s very intentional. Amanda and I tend to go, ‘That’s funny, but what can we do that’s even more outlandish? Let’s do that.’

AG: Another trope we leaned into was that we wanted to start our show where a Jane Austen novel typically ends—with the big engagement party, the happy ending moment. There’s no maypole, but they may as well be dancing around a maypole.

CM: Yes, in Austen’s world, that’s where we would leave our characters—engaged to their ideal mates and their problems solved! No one’s going to lose their home or their family! But that’s what’s funny, because there’s so much complexity in that situation, and our lead couple sets off on such a different journey than you think they will.

How did you approach balancing humor with some of these serious topics?

AG: It was important to us that this be funny. We wanted it to be meaningful, but not didactic. We’re not here to make a political statement—we’re here to make a human statement about what it’s like to go through this, not just for women but for people in general. Some of my favorite shows, the ones that have introduced me to a new world and grabbed my heart in some way—like Fun Home and Falsettos—didn’t tell me what to think; they made me fall in love the characters, and that changed how I saw the issues. That’s what we want to do: we want to hook you with a really fun story and make you care about the characters’ journeys.

What do you hope audiences take away from the show?

AG: One is that I hope they have a really good time. I really want them to laugh their heads off.

CM: Me too. We all need a little laughter!

AG: I want audiences to feel grabbed by the story, to fall in love with the characters, and empathize with them. For people who are frightened now, I hope they feel heard and heartened. And I hope everyone walks away with a new perspective—not necessarily a changed mind, but at least a deeper understanding. I think the best shows invite you in and let you look at issues in a different way. If we can do that, then we’ve succeeded.