The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, Green Highway Theater, at Urbus Orbis. She’s back and she’s pissed! Playwright Carolyn Gage has brought the Maid of Orleans onstage again to annihilate our image of Holy Joan sainthood. In this one-woman play she boasts of how she staved off puberty through anorexia (“There are no eating ‘disorders,’ only eating strategies”), how she invented her so-called divine mentors out of her own need for “role models,” and how her success was founded solely on self-confidence. Oh, and she rants against the hateful armies that failed to protect her from capture, the hateful king who failed to protect her from prison, and the hateful God (a man, just like the rest!) who failed to protect her from death’s agony. As she recounts her perpetual victimization, she informs her audience–the female part, that is–that her story is our story, that her suffering is “identical” to ours, and that we’re deluded if we believe we’re not suffering.
