The Globe announced its decision in a tweet, "Our new play 'I, Joan' shows Joan as a legendary leader who uses the pronouns ‘they/them'. We are not the first to present Joan in this way and we will not be the last. We can't wait to share this production with everyone and discover this cultural icon".

The news has prompted a backlash in Catholic circles, with several taking to Twitter to voice their dismay. One said the Globe Theatre interpretation detracts from the heroic life of St Joan of Arc and erases the dignity of womanhood.

To Catholics, St Joan of Arc symbolises chastity and courageous femininity as the woman who sacrificed her life in the pursuit of truth.

The theatre's announcement has led some to speak out against how far it takes artistic liberties.

"Please stop saying amazing women aren't really women" wrote Abigail Favale, a Catholic professor and expert on gender studies.

Favale authored "The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory", which approaches gender from a perspective informed by Church teaching.

Sophie Walker, co-founder of The Activate Collective which raises money for women to run in elections, also tweeted: "When I was a little girl, Joan of Arc presented thrilling possibilities about what one young girl could do against massed ranks of men. Rewriting her as not female and presenting it as progress is a massive disappointment."

In a statement on Friday, the play's artistic director Michelle Terry said, "History has provided countless, and wonderful examples of Joan portrayed as a woman. This production is simply offering the possibility of another point of view."

Terry argued that play adaptations make "anything possible" because "theatres do not deal with ‘historical reality'."

Sources

National Catholic Register

Catholic News Agency

Shakespeare's Globe

Soon after its completion, however, the original film "disappeared" on account of fire. Painstakingly, the director recreated it again from outtakes, but shortly afterwards, that negative too was obliterated in yet another fire.

Only a few years after its release, it seemed as if the film was lost forever, and just at a time when the now-Saint Joan was being re-introduced to the world. That was not the end of the matter, though. The flickering images were to return mysteriously from the flames, like the saint herself, and in circumstances no one could have imagined.

The canonization of St. Joan of Arc in 1920 was followed a year later by the publication of the transcripts of her trial. At the same time, one of the most promising young directors in Europe, Carl Dreyer, was invited to France to make a film. It was to be on any subject of his choosing.

The Danish director said that, at the time, he was considering as subject matter the lives of three French women. He devised a way of choosing which of these women's lives to turn into a film. Ironically, it was from the drawing of matches that the Maid of Orleans emerged as his subject.

Needless to say, the director's imagination was immediately ignited and for the next 18 months he set about researching all he could find on the life of the peasant girl from Domrémy. He could not have known then just how much, both artistically and personally, this film would cost him. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report, the beginning of an article by K.V. Turley, a London-based freelance writer and filmmaker with a degree in theology from the Maryvale Institute.
• Image: A Cinematic Odyssey