We are Three Sisters (NHB Modern Plays)

Poet, playwright and novelist Blake Morrison evokes the lives of the Brontë sisters, with a nod to Chekhov's Three Sisters. Against the backdrop of a windswept northern village, three remarkable young women live their lives brightly. In Haworth in the 1840s, in a gloomy parsonage, where there are neither curtains nor comforts, Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë light up their world with outspoken wit, aspirations, dreams and ideas. And throughout their confined lives intensely lived... they write. With a touch of poetic licence, Morrison shows us the overwhelming humanity, charged emotions and brooding unease which characterise the Brontë household - and that of Chekhov's Three Sisters. Blake Morrison's play We Are Three Sisters was first performed at the Viaduct Theatre, Halifax, in 2011. 'Well-researched... beautifully intact, and speaks absolutely to the constrained world the Brontës inhabited' - Telegraph 'Morrison's use of the Three Sisters template is as intelligent as it is daring... a finely tuned piece' - Guardian

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, and educated at Nottingham University, McMaster University and University College, London. After working for the Times Literary Supplement, he went on to become literary editor of both The Observer and the Independent on Sunday before becoming a full-time writer in 1995. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and former Chair of the Poetry Book Society and Vice-Chair of PEN, Blake has written fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism and libretti, as well as adapting plays for the stage. His best-known works are probably his two memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me.