Great Expectations (2018)

Dramaturg’s Notes

To some, Dickens is an escape, a passage back in time to Victorian England. To others, Dickens is an overly verbose writer, a unique form of torture to be endured in a high school English class. To those who know him better, they might see him as a satirist and a character artist, and others might see him as a seditious writer taking on systemic social injustice during the Industrial Revolution. Some may see him as a true artist exposing the points of hidden pain in his own life through his enumerable characters. Others see him as sellout who teases his stories out to increase his pay check. After all, he was paid by the word. So, who is Dickens? Truth be told … all of the above, and much, much more. Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, England. When he was 12, he was cruelly pulled out of school to work at a blacking factory while his father was imprisoned for debt. Upon his father’s release, he was able to go back to school, but only until the age of 15 when once again, he was forced to support his family, this time as a clerk. He began his illustrious literary career at the age of 21, with the Sketches of Boz. Dickens wrote during a time of rapid change and incredible industrial growth. He witnessed unengaged institutions that punished, but never protected, England’s poor, only intervening when it was too late. Everywhere around him, Dickens observed cruelty on individual and institutional levels; however, throughout his writing, Dickens maintains an optimism expressed by his characters’ astonishing ability to transform. Arguably his greatest masterpiece, Great Expectations was published in serial form over nine months from 1860-1861, and is filled with some of his most engaging characters and surprising plots.

- Gillian Riley Nogeire, Dramaturg