From the BYU-Idaho News Desk

REXBURG — The Brigham Young University-Idaho Department of Theater and Dance is excited to present its production of “Sense and Sensibility” in the Black Box Theater. This classic production will run June 28-July 1 and July 5-7 at 7:30 p.m., with an additional 2 p.m. show on Saturdays.

When reputation is everything, how do you follow your heart? Kate Hamill’s playful adaptation of the Jane Austen novel follows the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Dashwood sisters — sensible Elinor and hypersensitive Marianne — as they navigate the minefield of falling in love in gossipy late 18th-century England.

Justin Bates, the BYU-Idaho Theatre and Dance Department chair, said this production is easily identifiable with modern audiences.

“Students should come see this adaptation and production of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ because it does something really smart: it casts Regency society as a gaggle of ‘gossips,’” Bates said. “This is a really fun narrative device because it moves the story along really quickly, but it’s also incredibly dangerous for the characters. At the time in Regency England, gossip could completely destroy a woman’s reputation, a parallel to today’s social media in the way Twitter or other platforms can completely take down somebody’s world. That’s a parallel young people especially will understand.”

Tickets are on sale now at www.byui.edu/ticket-office or at the ticket office inside the University Store. Tickets cost $3 for students and $6 for the public.