|
Rain again Saturday night. I managed to have a gorgeous Indian
dinner with Carol and Dan at Sahib and still make it to my play with
time to spare. The play was George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan
with Emily Ackerman as Joan of Arc at the Aurora Theatre, three
hours of intimate theater goodness. I was sitting right on the
stage and didn't want to cross my legs for fear of tripping an actor.
Even today, especially today, Joan of Arc's story is compelling. You
know how the story ends, but trying to understand why things happened
the way they did brings its own understanding and horror.
Nationalism. Martyrdom. Spiritual leadership. The friction between
political and religious factions. It all sounds very familiar.
I imagine what Joan must have felt at the end, with her lungs filling
with smoke and the fire licking at her feet. I remember the opening
scene of Elizabeth when the martyrs are being burned at the
stake and are screaming out their prayers to God. Joan was a girl
who communicated with God directly. She didn't need the religious
institutions of the church or its holy men. Of course the church
was terrified of her. "What will the world be like when The Church's
accumulated wisdom and knowledge and experience, its councils of
learned, venerable pious men, are thrust into the kennel by every
ignorant laborer or dairymaid whom the devil can puff up with the
monstrous self-conceit of being directly inspired from heaven?"
I feel vaguely guilty bringing up the World Trade Center at this
point, mostly because it feels like a pretty unoriginal thing to do
these days, but I think of dying in fire and there I am. Just when
you think that you're doing all right, that the sense of loss has
faded somewhat, the shock of grief and disbelief hits you all over
again. Those buildings really aren't there anymore. Jeff Buckley
really did drown in that river and will never write another song.
Margaret Kilgallen lost the fight to breast cancer and will never
create another work of art. Melanie will never be able to hang out
with me again. And my relationship with her brother is dead.
Beautiful things, beautiful people, ceasing to exist.
My friends are going to Las Vegas to be slightly irresponsible
hedonists shortly after the New Year, and I am strongly tempted to
join them. However, the artists have just been chosen for the 2002
Whitney Biennial, and Kilgallen is one of them. I think I'll spend
my money on a trip to New York instead.
The fire could not consume Joan's heart.
Aurora Theatre Company
International Joan of Arc
Society
Margaret
Kilgallen
| 
Heidi J. De Vries
