by Kate Sonell
When did I first hear the story of Joan of Arc?
In all honesty I can’t remember. I only know that I’ve seemingly always been aware of its essence, not the details but the meaning. Or at least what I understood the meaning to be: a person standing up for what they believed in, for who they were, even if it meant facing death. That almost intrinsic awareness of Joan is beautifully illustrated by a fact at once magical and mundane: when Joan was put to the stake, her heart did not burn.
Nearly from the moment of her death, this wondrous detail has been a part of Joan’s story, her legend. It became more miraculous to me in adulthood when I learned it was true; not only did eyewitness accounts attest to it, but the physics of death by burning at the stake mean that the organs of the victims usually fail to turn to ash. Joan’s insides refused to play the part of kindling because that is simply not what happened to a person executed by that method. It was not just Joan’s heart, but all of her internal organs – her guts, her insides, everything soft and tender and red and bloody was spared the fire. Instead they were thrown into the river Seine like so much rubbish. If a fireproof heart is impressive, inspiring, how much more so the entire insides of a person?
There are two media portrayals of Joan that have most deeply affected me. The first was a person of deep conviction and great bravery portrayed by an actor -the same one who would inspire me to pursue that profession – on the children’s television show Wishbone. This Joan came from a novel written by Mark Twain, who, in his introduction to the book, makes clear his deep love and admiration for her and her story. Years later I would encounter a very different Joan from the mind of another famous writer, the La Pucelle of Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 1. In the play Joan was in love – or at least lust – with her king, she offered her soul to demons to gain power, and all her triumphs were meant to be laughable in the text. I think it is the rare modern audience member who can fully comprehend this characterisation, who can divorce themself from the modern understanding of Joan as holy, as fierce, as admirable. And while I was certainly not that person, the play did give me pause.
Here was a Joan unlike any I had met before. Joan had been a real person once. We have words she spoke recorded in writing, the same for people who testified for her in the retrial that would set the course for her present reputation even if it was twenty years too late to save her life. Those documents were long since available in Shakespeare’s time. Yet he wrote her as amorous, demonic, silly, and in the end a frightened little child trying to save her own life by any means necessary. In a word, this Joan was human. Without the benefit of autobiography, we do not have Joan’s story as she would choose to freely tell it, but only bits and pieces she meted out to a court that had all but convicted her. Who’s to say Joan may not have experienced at least some of those feelings in her time?
I realized that the Joan I had always known was not the only one, and I wanted to know how many more there might be. A quick internet search revealed a list with dozens upon dozens of depictions of Joan in media, a list which proclaimed itself by no means exhaustive. This was my first step on a journey during which I found Joan in plays, films, novels, biographies of herself or of those around her, books about famous wars, Catholic writings, Saint’s cards and pendants, even a Japanese video game and an anime. She continues to appear in new and exciting incarnations to this day, and so I am still working on The Joan Project, an interdisciplinary theatrical investigation into the life of the real Joan of Arc. Joan was in her time known as a peasant, a daughter, a prophet, a witch, a crybaby, a military leader, a galvanizer of the French peasantry, and, at the end of it all, executed not for any grand crime but for refusing to dress in any way but that which God declared good and right for her – as a man. In the decade I have spent with her so far, Joan has been all these things and more to me.
Joan of Arc was a person and now she is a legend. A story. And Joan has much to teach us about stories, the ones we tell others, the ones told about us, the ones we learn on purpose and by accident, and most mysterious – the ones we tell about ourselves. The Joan Project is seeking an answer that probably cannot be found in one lifetime or in a hundred – who was Joan to her own self?
If asked, what story would she tell?
Timeline
1990 something:
Kate is introduced to Joan of Arc by the literary children’s program Wishbone in an episode about Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc.
Top: Jeanne Simpson as Joan in “Bone of Arc”, with very curly almost white blond hair in vaguely medieval armor and hood, wearing a determined and joyous expression
Bottom: The cover of the junior novelization of the “Bone of Arc featuring Wishbone – a Jack Russell terrier with a brown spot over his right eye, in a vaguely medieval hood and tabard on a fiery orange background
2012
Joan and Kate reconnect in an acting class where Kate learns Joan is a character in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI. Kate reads the play for the first time, and performs Joan’s final monologue, beginning with the words “First let me tell you whom you have condemn’d…”
The page listing Shakespeare’s Histories in the Riverside Complete Works. Highlighted in pin are four plays, including “The First Part of Henry the Sixth”
Later that semester, Kate performs in Joan’s introductory scene from 1Henry VI. Kate begins to formulate her senior project for the following year – extracting Joan’s story from Shakespeare’s play. Kate begins to collect other interpretations of Joan in film/television, books and plays, and even videogames.
Image of Joan as depicted in Jeanne D’arc, a Japanese video game by Level-5. She has cropped blonde hair and large blue eyes
2013
JOAN is produced as Kate’s senior capstone project. This is now conceived of as the first entry in The Joan Project, a life-long pursuit.
Kate, a white actor with long red air, as Joan, stands onstage in two beams of light that make the shape of a cross. Before her is a wooden bowl of water on a black table
2017
Joan is briefly seen in an outdoor performance with a focus on a semi-ecological monologue in 1 Henry VI about the war torn land of France
Left: The cover of The Maid and the Queen: The secret History of Joan of Arc by Nancy Goldstone. Right: The cover of JOAN: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint by Donald Spoto
2018
Kate and collaborator Olivia Sonell spend the summer workshopping an entry in The Joan Project that never quite makes it off the ground. Still, the work is illuminating, with creative explorations through movement of Joan’s hopes, fears, and dreams.
The tattered cover of a black and white composition notebook. The title space is marked up with blue pen. It reads “Joan Journal” and has a number of scribbled quotes from songs and plays and other Joan “sources.”
2019
With collaborators Seth Majnoon writing and Olivia Sonell directing, Kate premieres a new Joan monologue, one that combines Shakespeare’s words with other poetical renderings and original text by Majnoon. Deep exploration of Joan’s gender, and a long-imagined image of Joan marked from head to toe and scrubbing the words off come to life.
Top: Kate as Joan, viewed from above. She sits with er legs crossed. Visible on her arms and legs are words – mostly insulting descriptions of Joan from the text of 1 Henry VI.
Bottom: Kate as Joan scrubbing off the words
2022
The Joan Project dips into hybrid academia-art. The 2019 monologue is re-staged and recorded as part of a short film, a retrospective of the work so far. This film is presented at the Critical Femininities Conference: Liminal
Accessibility copy coming soon
2023
The Joan Project is featured in the proceedings journal for The Critical Femininities Conference: Liminal – a picture from the 2013 production is used as the cover image
2024
Kate begins to imagine a new movement-based Joan iteration. An examination of the poses in statues (and perhaps portraits) of Joan of Arc, who made them, and where they stand/are displayed. Questions of Joan’s evolution from battling colonization to symbol of France as colonizer arise
A visit is paid to the Joan of Arc statue in NYC
2025
A new The Joan Project presentation at a BAFTSS special interest group on adaptation. Kate discusses her interest in Joan’s relationship to colonization and artistic visual depictions of her.