"Saint Joan follows the struggle of teenage Joan of Arc in a bureaucratic world that forces her to fight to the death for her beliefs"Photo by Libby Styles with permission for Varsity

Due to be performed in the Cambridge Union Chamber this week is a play that promises not just to hold the mirror of history up to our current circumstances, but to speak confidently to our reality and look us in the eye as we exit through the doors of the ayes and noes. Set in a mediaeval world not fundamentally unlike our own, Saint Joan follows the struggle of teenage Joan of Arc in a bureaucratic world that forces her to fight to the death for her beliefs. 

"The inevitable incidence of eye-contact between the actors and the audience lends a sense of comedy"

Just days before their opening night this Friday, I visited the Cambridge Union to preview the cast’s first rehearsal in their costumes rented from the National Theatre. With the daylight streaming through the windows of the union, the voices of the actors filled the space right into the eaves of the historic debating chamber, and the energy between the characters, the tension in the sincerity, discomfort and humour that each of the actors handled with such sensitivity, was tangible and inspiring. Speaking with director Tom Runciman, producer Claudia Vyvyan, assistant director and producer Gwynn Horbury and actor Marie-Ange Camara, the animated dynamic between the cast and crew is symptomatic of the consideration and enthusiasm that has devised this play.

"The inevitable incidence of eye-contact between the actors and the audience lends a sense of comedy"

Describing the historic setting of the narrative and the delicately formulated discomfort that its commentary seeks to convey, director Tom Runciman describes the sense of ‘intimacy and intensity’ derived from such a unique space, and explains how this physical context interacts with the play’s concerns to ‘pull back the curtain’ on the enclosed political discussions that inform our personal lives. Marie-Ange Camara, playing Joan, describes the physicality of the debating chamber as ‘inclusive’, bringing the audience into the centre of these negotiations as a commentary on the proximity of their implications despite the distance in which we are held from the decisions of war. Meanwhile, as producer Claudia Vyvyan highlights, the inevitable incidence of eye-contact between the actors and the audience lends a sense of comedy, which as Tom notes, only serves to bring the sincerity of these injustices into sharper focus. 

"The animated dynamic between the cast and crew is symptomatic of the consideration and enthusiasm that has devised this play"Photo by Libby Styles with permission for Varsity

Playing a simultaneously strong and innocent young women whose conviction is met with suspicion and disbelief, Marie-Ange describes the sense of humanity felt deeply in Joan’s drive for what she believes to be right, and mentions that an ‘understanding [of] the stakes in each scene’ has been key in managing the tension between the character’s youth and conviction. Exploring what assistant producer and director Gwynn Horbury describes as the ‘unwavering confidence’ of youth, Claudia adds that Joan portrays a sense of ‘moral beauty’ in her naivety, asking us to reevaluate our assumptions about what it means to know and feel that something is right. Wearing a costume of mediaeval armour, Marie-Ange describes ‘the heaviness of your character’ that comes with the physicality of the costumes, as well as the psychological implications of Joan as a soldier whose values are yet defined by her own morals rather than the dictates of an empty political role. 

"Far more than a cautionary tale of a mediaeval morality play, Saint Joan promises to transport its audience to a past"Photo by Libby Styles with permission for Varsity

The ‘surreal contrast’ imposed by the temporally juxtaposed but disturbingly identifiable themes in the play is something that Tom, Gwynn and Claudia hope to create with an ‘immersive’ experience of live music and dramatic costumes in the historic union chamber. In their rehearsal the actors displayed with such compassion a very real sense of the underlying discomfort in the notion of justice running through the play, and with so sensitively portraying both hilarious and calculating, innocent and assured characters, I am extremely excited to see the piece in its entirety.


READ MORE

Mountain View

Sage A comrade and her radio: Tales from Star City

Far more than a cautionary tale of a mediaeval morality play, Saint Joan promises to transport its audience to a past that, in fact, only lies distorted from view, and rings with voices that leave not just an echo in the union chamber, but live to seep out from its walls as we decide through which door we choose to leave.

Saint Joan is showing at 7:30 pm in the Cambridge Union Debating Chamber from Fri 13th – Sun 15th May