Woker and woker and woker and . . .
The excellent veteran blogger Ann Althaus gives us an excerpt from the Times article, which is pay-walled.
[The playwright Charlie] Josephine said the decision to make Joan nonbinary came after studying Joan’s life and realizing that Joan of Arc had been willing to die at the stake rather than stop wearing men’s clothing. This was “not a casual fashion statement,” Josephine said. “It was a deep need for them.” Josephine wanted to depict what it would have been like for “a young person in a female body, who is questioning gender in a very different society than what we live in now,” they said. “My younger self really needed a protagonist like this,” they added…
Althaus adds:
A quote from the Globe’s artistic director: “Everyone’s got an idea of how plays should be done and how historical figures should be treated. All ‘I, Joan’ was doing, [said], was asking, ‘Who is Joan for now?'”
Do the play-makers care about Joan‘s identity — to herself — or are they appropriating her interest in her own identity for their purposes? I see an inherent contradiction.
To put it mildly. The army of woke continues its dreary and depressing march through the western canon. Nothing in its path is safe.
The Taos Tatler 