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Almost exactly a year after the British tabloid press went nuts at Shakespeare’s Globe for staging a production of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ that included trigger warnings and a suicide helpline number, the iconic Bankside institution has caused another splash with new play, Charlie Josephine’s ‘I, Joan’.
Although the ‘Romeo & Juliet’ ‘scandal’ literally made front pages (‘Wokeo & Juliet’ declared the front page of The Sun, tenuously), the brouhaha over ‘I, Joan’ seems rather more bitter. The crux of the issue is that the play imagines French national heroine and Catholic icon Joan of Arc – whom the English burnt at the stake in 1431 – as being non-binary, using they/them pronouns, with the role performer by Isobel Thom, a non-binary actor, and the concept art featuring chest binders.
While the press has seemed more pruriently fascinated than actively incensed over ‘I, Joan’ – though there have been a couple of negative opinion pieces – its coverage has fed off a huge social media backlash from what one might refer to as the gender-critical community, who could most charitably be described as feeling that reimagining a female historical figure as non-binary is an act of female erasure.
There doesn’t seem to be any particular call to cancel it, more mass disapproval, but still, it’s a pretty remarkable backlash against a play that nobody has actually seen yet.
Should it be controversial?
Again, it’s difficult to overemphasise the fact that nobody has actually seen ‘I, Joan’, and we’ve only got the vaguest plot outline. The Globe has put out a statement emphasising the fact the play isn’t trying to revise history and is just a fictional exploration of a historical figure whose gender identity has been speculated upon before. It would seem pretty laughable to imagine that a two-month run for a new play in England would have any impact whatsoever on the global perception of Joan’s gender.
Let’s be honest, the backlash is almost entirely coming from people pre-disposed to object to the idea of non-binary as a legitimate form of gender identity. At the same time, it is relatively new as a mainstream concept and ‘I, Joan’ is the first large-scale UK theatre production to be written by a non-binary playwright, have a non-binary lead and deal conceptually with the idea of being non-binary: it’s less surprising that this would cause controversy than ‘Romeo & Juliet’, because it’s breaking more ground. Distasteful as aspects of the backlash have been, you ultimately have to think it’s all pretty good publicity for a new play that was actually announced way back in January to almost no notice beyond the theatre press.
Will it be any good? There’s a danger that the controversy over the play could overshadow this fairly fundamental question. But if you want to know our verdict, ‘I, Joan’ opens to press on September 1 and reviews will follow the next day.
‘I, Joan’ is at Shakespeare’s Globe Aug 25-Oct 22. Book here.