ST JOAN

A satire set in France time travelling back to the Middle Ages and returning to today.

2 women or many more. This can be a large choral work for women with the text divided or performed with 2-3 actors of differing ethnicities.

WHITEWASHED FILMS 2015

ST JOAN TRAILER LONDON 2015
Directed by Katrin HIlbe.

ST JOAN, 2015
Directed by Katrin HIlbe.

ST JOAN ON FRENCH TELEVISION
Clip from French Television 1997
Directed by Julia Pascal.
Juliet Dante, Rachel Harper und Samantha Pearl, in Aktion beim Theaterstueck “St Joan” von Julia Pascal, aufgenommen am Freitag, 22. Mai 2015, im Gasometer in Triesen. Regie fuehrte die Liechtensteinerin Katrin Hilbe. Foto & Copyright: Eddy Risch

Reviews

“Challenging, erudite and above all, captivating” *****
Broadway Baby 2014
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“Pick of the Week”
Jewish Chronicle, 1997
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**Joan Rabinowitch in a Taxi**
I am in a taxi crossing London. It’s a hot summer’s afternoon. The taxi driver is a Hindu. Tells me about reincarnation. How you never die. After death you are reborn. You start on the journey as an insect maybe, so never kill a fly you never know it might have been your father in another life and then with each lifetime you learn something and you gain a higher consciousness and next time round you are born as, say, a goat or a cow and so it goes on until you are reborn as a human. First a woman of course and then if you behave well and live a good life then maybe a man which of course is higher than a woman and then highest of all is a priest. It is a hot night, I go to sleep with the window open.
Joan of Arc!
What would it be like to come back as Joan of Arc?

**Joan’s Dream**

Domrémy
I lie in my bed at night and through the window I see
the great crossroads
that cut France and
Germany
Roads for travellers?
Roads for armies?
Here where the roads meet they form a cross
A St Andrew’s cross
Under my window. A cross
Lorraine
I see a great four-headed road
Paris
Aix la Chapelle
Prague
Vienna
Domrémy lies on the brink of a boundless forest
Haunted by fairies
At night, once a year
In the summer as night falls and spirits awaken
the priest goes to the forest and reads mass to keep the
fairies’ power down

**Joan’s Trial**

*[All these voices come from her. She is both accuser and accused.]*

Do you give yourself over to the Church Militant?
Yes
You say God has ordered you to wear men’s clothing
Yes
So why do you want to wear women’s dress for your death?
Do you know that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret hate the English?
They love those who our Lord loves and they hate those God hates
Does God hate the English?
I don’t know but I know the English will be booted out of France! Except for those who die here.

**Joan Sings Mass**
*[With horror.]*
The body had to be reduced to cinders and thrown in the Seine
They dress me in a long white tunic and a tall white hat
And on it they write
‘heretic
backslider
apostate
devil-worshipper’
The sound of the cart’s wheels on the cobble and it’s five hundred year’s humiliation as they lead me and ‘witch’ they scream
I was born on the night of the Epiphany January 6th fourteen twelve
They say that on that night the cocks in the countryside crowed with unusual persistence and the villagers experienced an inexplicable sensation of great joy
‘France will be saved by a Virgin!’
People spoke of other marvellous events. The singing of
the the cocks, this cantus gallorum, seemed to have a
singularly prophetic quality.
And when the cock crows three times he will say…
The body had to be reduced to cinders and thrown in the Seine
On the Wednesday
After Trinity Sunday
I was guarded by eight hundred spearmen and led to a platform of a great height
constructed of a wooden billet supported by occasional
walls and lathe and plaster and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction
For the creation of air currents
The man who orders my death
the Bishop of Beauvais dies on soft down
and
I
I
I in a fire upon a scaffold

**Joan Takes a Trip to Paris**
It is a coolish summer, and, as usual, in August, Paris is empty of Parisians, only the tourists fill the streets to marvel at the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysées and the Folies Bergères…..

ENDS

Production History

Premiered at New End Theatre, 1992. Directed by Julia Pascal.

French touring: Lille and Paris, 1997

Director’s Lab, Lincoln Theatre, New York, 2010. Extracts.  Directed by Orly Rabinyan.

Edinburgh Fringe -Directed by Katrin Hilbe
Bedlam Theatre 2nd – 24th August 2014

St Joan is published in Crossing Jerusalem & Other Plays available to purchase from Bloomsbury