St. Joan of Now
Act 3
The people in this play are not Joan or Giles. They are actors. Railway trains certainly did not exist in the Middle Ages. The characters are aware of this. They are no more surprised by their history then we are.
Joan’s behaviour was carefully observed. She might, from the beginning, have known her future.
Joan and Giles are not embarrassed by the failure of their lives, perhaps they knew that they had set in motion the expulsion of the British from France. They did not possess the ideas of Britain and France; to some degree, they invented those notions.
ACT III
The shattered compartment of a railway train going towards the front. Strong light outside. Flashes and commas of shadow from bridges, embankments etc. . Joan, armed and uniformed without rank badges, is accompanied by variously armed and uniformed aids. Gilles wears a pin-stripe suit.
Chorus M+W Between
The train’s quaking floor
And the close steel sky
She sat
W Beset by intimations of discontinuous space,
M Unpredictable diffusion,
W Less certainty: destiny with error.
M+W Many different things happening.
W History difficult.
M Causality multiple, complex,
M+W Coincidence.
W In the cruel light of the shaking carriage she sees
Irrelevant gestures,
Joan Pasts.
Symbols.
Straw dogs.
Paper money.
Little Iphigenia.
Low calorie sacrifices.
Are they my memories because I deem them so
Or am I the product of my reflection?
Do they choose me
Do I form them?
Gilles Is this seat taken, Mademoiselle?
Joan Gilles!
Gille You know me?
Joa Once I thought I knew you well.
Gil But who can tell ?
Joan You are Gilles de Rais
Who brought the Prince to Rouen
To be crowned.
Gilles Twice through the English lines:
Joan Once from the front,
Gilles And once from behind!
No, is that was you!
Wasn’t it?
Joan You let them win.
Gilles We missed our chance.
Joan Pray silence for the Earl Marshal of France!
Gilles (softly) I let you burn.
Joan But in the end they let you have your turn.
Gilles Y0u know the score.
They didn’t need us any more.
Joan They didn’t have to say
That you drank children’s blood.
Gilles You never called for me.
Joan How could I call
You never came.
Gilles If I had realised…
You’re right, we could have won…
I played their game…
Joan No matter what you say
Things would have come out just the same.
Forget it Gilles —
It’s history …
Gilles Joan don’t travel South.
Joan I’m small fry.
Gilles The dogs have got their napkins round their necks.
Joan They need me there.
Gilles Don't go.
Joan Why not?
To save you the inconvenience
Of a guilty conscience
When you fail whatever test
You’ve set yourself this time?
Search your heart,
It begs at your own gates,
Look into your heart
For the greatness that you never ever lost.
Giles, you must learn to love the beast you hunt.
Death is incommensurate with life; incomplete.
One day perhaps you will see that it never was
It was not you in the cell.
Neither was it you set free.
Gilles In the end I pray
I will,
More or less,
See you
As you
Are:
For now
You are crystal sugar coated
Covered in sparkling light
And sweet to taste.
Joan Gilles, the world is not a question
Gilles Eh ?
Joan It is an answer.
Gilles The question?
Joan There are no questions.
Our light casts no more shadow than any other flame
Gilles OK
Joan OK what?
Gilles OK, OK.
OK, there is no such thing as a free lunch
That you have to pay for?
No.
Just OK.
Joan I’m going South.
Gilles OK.
Newsperson Joan …
Joan …
Joan, join the winners.
Women Chorus Joan, Joan join the parade!
Joan, Joan join with the sinners.
Joan Joan your future is made.
Don't be absurd
Nothing stands in your way but a word;
Say YES
And be free
Just say yes
And you’ll be
Leading the glorious
Ever Victorious
Glorious, Glorious
Bourgeoisie.
M {The triumph.
{{The triumph
{{{The triumph.
Of spectacular economy!
Women Chorus Immaculate dream,
Whiter than snow,
The washing machine
Ready to go.
Soft fingers of dawn
Caress the panels
With warm hues
Of rare enamels.
Men Chorus The sun at its height
Glitters and twitches
Rivers of light
Amongst the switches.
Women Chorus The setting sun
At home
In the dome
That holds the foam.
Women Chorus & Joan (turning to face Women Chorus)
Perfect the sheen
Good is the good
Clean is the clean
Just as it should.
Joan I am not in control,
Present irrelevant.
There is no little captain
Watching through the eye of the Captain of this ship.
No captain in charge of the small captain
Nor any, increasingly tiny, captains
At all.
I am in some way different to my kind,
Indefinably but obviously objectionable.
I Have stumbled through the play
Of lines I never understood
Dreaded by those I failed.
I have no echo in the mirror of life.
I am an untrue hypothesis my specie made about its environment.
I have form without function.
I must acquire some useful skill,
Fear, Pain, Death,
Perhaps learn to talk Cruel,
The international language.
Tend the weapon garden.
Prune and nourish the tree of swords.
Deny suffering
And its attendant
Inconveniences.
Surf the pain
And enjoy a worry shared
As a worry doubled.
Gilles I remember this future,
A parade of billions of demented city dwellers
Compressed
Into order by rat board
Covered with pictures
Of what life is really like.
Lead by transparent but sly
Killer thieves armed with books
Of pages
To be torn out
In exchange for the better things of life.
Chorus Things of life.
Newsperson Yes but!
Gilles But
Your empty eyes
Advertise that the passive lives of its spectators
Are the oxygen of the spectacle.
As a reward for a lifetime of uncommunicated panic
You have chosen, to become
A component of a scoreboard
Which only exists to record the mistakes
You can’t stop making.
Chorus Victory parade.
Better than Gin
Victory parade
You’d better join in
Men Chorus Your deology’s stinks
Women Chorus Our deology’s right
Men Chorus Your deology’s sinks
Women Chorus Our deology’s light
Men Chorus Your deology’s sad
Women Chorus Our deology’s fun
Men Chorus Your deology’s bad
Chorus (together) Our deology’s the right one.
Newsperson Why be a goose when you …
Women Chorus Why be a goose when you …
Men Chorus Why be a goose when you …
Newsperson Could be a proper gander.
Chorus Reality.
Joan Sorrow is no indication of humanity
Nor the monopoly of any breed or race,
The fear of the sparrow is the fear of the lion
The sorrow of a dog that of its master or ox.
Gilles (to JOAN) Joan, we started this.
We stripped the world
From the backs of its supporting
Elephants and tortoises,
Joan And crawled under it ourselves.
We broke heaven
And fell from the ruins
Into the ruins of our own world.
We made another kind of time —
Modern —
Defective.
And now we wait
In the Grim Sower’s field,
Where,
Close to the spirit of an otherwise soulless thing,
Seeming meets dreaming.
I feel thin,
Taut.
Fragile
I feel that
The things around me are trying to tell me
That the world is the answer
To a question
I lack the wit
Or courage
To ask.
Satisfying the demands of the
Brittle silence
Around me
I have became a glass sponge,
My resources more than depleted.
My mouth a transparent toothed flower.
We are no more than the score.
Our only useful skill
Is that we can’t forget
The way to die.
Mike Lesser