Sarah Snook aims to do Joan of Arc justice
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She was improbable to her contemporaries 600 years ago, and she remains just as improbable now. Joan of Arc bent France’s king, nobility, army and church to her will (turning the tide of the 100 Years War with England), all as a low-born, teenaged girl claiming to be an agent of the Almighty, and in the ultimate patriarchal, hierarchical, ecclesiastical, warrior society.
The sheer implausibility of Joan’s short life – she was burned at 19 – is not lost on Sarah Snook, who plays the title role in Sydney Theatre Company’s new production George Bernard Shaw’s St Joan. Snook, active across theatre, television and film (the latter including The Dressmaker and Predestination), says she has enjoyed “discovering who this person is – the sort of anomaly that she is”. She also admires Joan’s capacity to turn perceived handicaps into strengths.
The improbable made real: Sarah Snook plays the title role in STC’s new production of George Bernard Shaw’s St Joan.
Photo: Louise Kennerley
The production, directed by Imara Savage, highlights the gender facet of the story. “If this was a young boy, he wouldn’t have been able to achieve the things that she did in the way that she did,” says Snook. “People were so confounded by her that they had no other choice but to believe in her.”
Believing in her, circa 1429, meant believing she heard the voices of St Margaret, St Catherine and St Michael relaying the will of God – challenging stuff for a renowned sceptic like Shaw to build into his protagonist’s reality.
“I think he manages to balance it,” says Snook. “He allows the possibility of a divine presence, but at the same time, [in his lengthy preface] he talks about how it’s the outcome that we should look to. He talks about Newton having the apple fall on his head and discovering gravity, and, had he discovered it in another more bizarre way, it wouldn’t change the outcome of having discovered gravity. Joan managed to change the course of the 100 Years War. That she did it through hearing voices shouldn’t change that actuality.”
Article source: http://www.espncricinfo.com/india-v-australia-2016-17/content/story/1087726.html?CMP=OTC-RSS
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