Theatre and Dance Productions Opens Spring Season with 'Saint Joan of Arc'
02/26/2020
As it prepares to open its spring season, Theatre and Dance Productions is collaborating with Prison Performing Arts to present an epic tale of one woman’s quest to follow her faith and to free her country in St. Joan of Arc.
St. Joan of Arc (senior Carlee Cosper) seeks to inspire the King of France to break
the English siege of Orleans.
The show opens Thursday, Feb. 27, at 8 p.m. in the Black Box Theatre of the Kranzberg Arts Center, as part of a partnership that brings SLU productions onto professional stages.
St. Joan of Arc runs through Sunday, March 1 and includes evening shows nightly and a matinee production on Saturday, Feb. 29.
The play, which chronicles the life of the French saint, combines high medieval poetry, heavy metal and contemporary work by women incarcerated in the Missouri state women’s correctional facility in Vandalia, into an epic tale of resolve, courage and triumph in the face of oppression.
Cast members and collaborators from SLU and Prison Performing Arts also contributed scenes to the play.
“I think the biggest thing students take away from a play like this has to do with the possibilities for artistic creation,” Lucy Cashion, MFA, the production’s director and assistant professor of theatre in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, explained.
“The student ensemble has created this play: from prisoners' writings, from pre-existing literature, from songs, from films, from poems and from improvisation, all centered around Joan of Arc," Cashion continued.
About the Play
St. Joan of Arc is a devised work of theatre that explores the question: 'Who tells your story?' The play presents the story of Joan of Arc's life, from her first vision of the Saints through her death, as told by different artists.
The source text includes a first scene based on "The Tale of Joan of Arc," written in 1429 by the French court poet Christine de Pizan.
The next scene was written in 2019 by a woman incarcerated in the state prison in Vandalia, Missouri. She created the scene in response to an 1879 painting of Joan and the Saints by Jules Bastien-Lepage.
The third scene was created in 2020 in rehearsals by the Saint Joan of Arc cast. It imagines that Joan played in a heavy metal band before joining the French army.
Each important moment of Joan's life, either real of fictional, is depicted from someone else's point of view.
From the Director’s Chair: More about the Show
This production is actually not an adaptation of the Shaw play, though a portion of one of the scenes from George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan is in our production. This production is an adaptation of the story of Joan of Arc.
Largely it's part of the season because of how the piece is constructed. It's a vast collaboration over time and space that offers unique opportunities for our students and our program. We have been working on this piece for about seven months, and even after the production at the Kranzberg Arts Center closes, we will continue to develop this project for about another year.
The collaborators include playwriting workshop participants at the Women's Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Missouri, SLU theater students and faculty members, staff at Prison Performing Arts, and eventually, professional theatre production companies Equally Represented Arts and Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble.
Joan of Arc was the same age as many of this production's cast members when she died. She was abused by a corrupted patriarchal court. She's also at times very difficult to like and admire in the way one wants or expects to from the legends we all know about her martyrdom. Her story exposes the myth of the perfect victim.
Throughout the fall of 2019, Rachel Tibbetts, director of youth programs at Prison Performing Arts, junior Emma Glose and I traveled weekly to the women's prison in Vandalia to conduct a playwriting workshop that focused on Joan of Arc. About 35 incarcerated women participated in these sessions.
They generated a lot of material. Much of this material makes up our play, Saint Joan of Arc, including Joan's first encounter with the Saints; the coronation of Charles VII; the executioners' monologues; the letters read to Joan in prison; 'Dateline. Joan of Arc: Heroine of Heretic?’ and Joan's final monologue.
SLU students will perform this production at the prison for the general population, including the playwrights, on Saturday, March 7.
Later, a theater student will travel with Rachel and me to assist with staging Saint Joan of Arc in prison with the incarcerated women.
The entire SLU ensemble will then travel to the prison to see the women's production of the play.
Collaboration is the most integral and challenging component of making theatre. Institutions categorize and value each person differently according to her past actions, wealth, family, locale, education, connections, achievements, appearance, eloquence, etc.
But in creating art, these identifying attributes often do not matter. For instance, the incarcerated person is not necessarily a worse or better artist than the free one. Creating with disparate people makes us rethink our paradigm for valuing a person.
This is a new play about Joan of Arc. Within it, theater lovers will recognize portions from Shaw's Saint Joan, Jean Anouilh's The Lark, and Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part One.
They will also be challenged to think about character differently. Our Joan changes as the person telling her story changes.
Want to Go?
- Theatre and Dance Productions will open its spring season with Saint Joan of Arc, a contemporary, devised adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. Performances will run Thursday, Feb. 27, through Sunday, March 1, in the Black Box Theatre, Kranzberg Arts Center.
- Performances begin at 8 p.m.
- There will be a matinee on Saturday, Feb. 29, at 2 p.m.
- Tickets available through metrotix.com, by calling 314-534-1111 or at the venue one hour prior to performance.
Photos and story by Amelia Flood, University Marketing and Communications.