Actor Julie Harris
Synopsis
'In this classic drama, which is surprisingly humorous, this fabled telling by Jean Anouilh about the life and legend of Joan of Arc is literally dramatized in front of Joan's persecutors. This is designed to compellingly demonstrate her bravery, faith, and most importantly, her veracity. Despite the sincerity and innocence of the lark, the rigidity of the church will only accept one outcome - a full renunciation of Joan's 'voices'.
This though provoking new translation paints a biting and sardonic picture of politics, morality, and religion and how they affect the affairs of men, with not such a distant echo of current events.
View theatre images from the Lark. The Minack Theatre. 1976 & Shenandoah University. 2001.
Autographed TIME Magazine Cover Featuring Julie Harris as Jeanne d'Arc. Issue Dated November 28, 1955 Enlarge image 
|
|
Jean Anouilh (June 23, 1910- October 3, 1987)
A major French dramatist of the 20th century.
He was born in Bordeaux and had Basque ancestry. He started his career as a jobbing writer in the film industry. In 1931, his first play, L'Hermine, flopped, but he followed it up with a string of other
 A selection of the most enduring work of one of this century's best-known French playwrights A with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, was at the forefront of the post-war generation of playwrights in Paris. In England his plays were championed by Peter Brook. Antigone is a response to the German occupation of France and established his popularity in 1944 (the Germans ironically, thought that it was a pro-Nazi in its portrayal of King Creon and thus allowed its production); Poor Bitos, Anouilh's angriest play explores the act of judicial murder and The Lark is a version of the Joan of Arc story.
All three plays show his fondness for reworking myth, history and legend. Meanwhile Leocadia, about an opera singer who dies after a three day love affair with a prince and The Waltz of the Toreadors, about a general whose mistress attempts to prove his wife's infidelity, represent another talent - for ironic, modern comedy.
"Anouilh is a poet but not a poet of words, he is a poet of words-acted, of scenes-set, of players-performing." (Peter Brook)
Read the play: Part I - Part II - Note
Click the thumbnail for a larger image.
|
Overview
