Professor David Peimer
Joan of Arc: In Cinema and Theatre
Summary
After offering a brief factual history of Joan of Arc’s life, Professor David Peimer explores the many ways Joan has been portrayed in cinema and theater. Specifically, he examines several film clips, George Bernard Shaw’s play on Joan of Arc, and finally Shakespeare’s Henry VI, where she is a significant character.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Oh, of the Arc title. Well there’s debate as to what her surname was, and the different names, I mean, Shaw users more the original name, and it’s either linked, ‘cause there was no apostrophe at the time, either rarely for names, and very few peasants would’ve had the privilege of a surname. So it could’ve been linked to place or origin, you know, where people were born or resided, and there’s a link to possibly to, you know, one of the names, the surname anyway.
Yeah, Graham Green, as you say here, Graham Green restructured and rewrote the film script. Absolutely. And as you say, Ron, Catholic Church is a large topic in Graham Green’s writing. Absolutely. So Graham Green wrote the final script, for Otto Preminger. I think Graham Green was influenced by, but I don’t think he literally took, you know, many lines from the Shaw play. I think they tried to use from a different series of sources. But I’d have to go back and look at the screen play itself, to really to be honest, to give you an honest reply there.
Absolutely. I mean, those are her real dates of when she lived, 13, 14 hundreds and so on, in this whole historical period. And then the last one. I ask the question of modern day supposition, response to what I thought this thinking sort of exists today.