Jeanne, the Maid: A Trial & Execution of Jeanne D'Arc (2003)

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Video

The piece was built from the actual trial transcripts of Joan of Arc. We had been planning to do our first family show, a production of Pinocchio which also would have starred Brynna Jourden. But given issues surrounding the start of war in Iraq, we decided we needed to address other issues. Joan of Arc’s trial seemed then, as it does still, a germane subject for the time. We made no reference in the production to current events — save a singing of “Our Country ‘Tis of Thee” / “God Save the Queen” as we burned our Jeanne and a flyer on the table just outside our venue doors. But the flyer made clear our anti-war position before that was a popular position within Seattle’s artistic community, and some local critics decided to judge the entire production as if it had been somehow contemporized with current events.

Jeanne is the only Akropolis production in which neither Joseph nor Zhenya Lavy performed, and it contained the least music of all our work.

Perhaps some day we will post video of the remarkable moment when a member of the audience, unable to bear the fact that we had burned Jeanne at the stake and then left her there for them to pass as they departed, attempted to retrieve Brynna — who remained in character — from the stage.