‘I’m always hungry for historical queer representation,” says Charlie Josephine, the non-binary playwright of I, Joan, a sweaty, heady, joyously queer new drama about the patron saint of France. “Because our history has been erased – particularly transgender people’s – there is very limited documentation of us throughout history, even though we have existed since the beginning of time.”
I, Joan, which has just opened at the Globe theatre in London, throws us into the life of 17-year-old Joan of Arc, the 15th-century teenage peasant who claimed to be divinely chosen to lead the French army during the hundred years war. With a limited surviving archive from medieval France, there are details about Joan’s life that we will never know for sure. This makes her story ripe for re-examination and – for Josephine – reclamation.
