The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays

by Carolyn Gage

Joan is back!
The explosive, underground classic The Second Coming of Joan of Arc is back in print at last! For two decades, Carolyn Gages revolutionary play about a cross-dressing, teenaged, runaway lesbian Joan of Arc has been rousing women to resistance inspiring them to walk out of patriarchal institutions and fight for a feminist vision. This new collection includes six other powerful Gage plays:
The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman
The greatest actress of the 19th century, a lesbian butch, makes a riotous last stand.
Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter
A lesbian butch stakes her claim to a place in men's history the only way she can.
Cookin with Typhoid Mary
History's most notorious typhoid carrier tells her side of the story.
The Parmachene Belle
The Maine hunting guide who loved Annie Oakley offers a lesson on fly fishing.
Harriet Tubman Visits a Therapist
Radical activism meets one-day-at-a-time therapism in a fight-to-the-death.
Artemisia and Hildegard
Two of the most powerful women artists in history square off on a volatile panel about strategies for survival.

Genres: Plays, Feminism, Lesbian, LGBT, Fiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

Carolyn Gage is a lesbian feminist playwright, performer, director, and activist. The author of nine books on lesbian theatre and sixty-five plays, musicals, and one-woman shows, she specializes in non-traditional roles for women, especially those reclaiming famous lesbians whose stories have been distorted or erased from history. In 2011, her play Stigmata won the Maine Literary Award in Drama from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Also in 2011, her play The Ladies' Room was named national finalist for the prestigious Heideman Award, given to the winner of the National 10-Minute Play Contest of the Actors' Theatre of Louisville. Her collection of plays The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in Drama, the top LGBT book award in the US. In 2009, she was named one of the "Ten Most Intriguing People in Maine" by Portland Magazine, and was awarded a three-month residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. In 2010, she was named one of the "Most Influential People in Portland" by the Portland Phoenix. Gage tours internationally in her award-winning, one-woman play, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, offering performances, workshops, and lectures on lesbian theatre.

Reviews

[han⚢ · Rating 5 out of 5]

picked this up initially at the prospect of lesbian joan of arc, stayed for the incredible feminist theory

gage is an absolute genius. womanhood has never felt more genuine than how her plays depict it to be. highly, HIGHLY recommend

[Jessica]

Many of these plays, even the ones with multiple characters, read at times more like political speeches to the audience than narratives, which is not my cup of tea in a theater production. That said, I appreciate the value of having these plays. I particularly liked Louisa May Incest. Also very cool that the used copy I bought was signed.

[Sonnydee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really brilliant lesbian feminist mythmaking. Good stuff. "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc" and "Artemisia and Hildegard" were probably my favourites, but at least half of them made me cry all over my book like a wiener. Not that they took themselves too seriously, some were quite witty and fun, but Gage sure knows how to pack an emotional punch. And she sure has captured what it's like to be a dyke in communities where that's not an acceptable option. My main takeaway is that Rich was right when she said that a central fact of woman's history is that we have always resisted male tyranny. We've done it in a lot of different ways, but we're born to survive.

I wish some of the plays were longer but I suppose that's not the point. And if my biggest complaint is that I wanted more I suppose that's a good sign.

And as a Joan of Arc nerd, this is one of my favourite depictions of the kid.

[Eli Vannata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wrote an essay and presented this play to my playwriting class. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. It’s very eye-opening and gives you a new perspective on a lot of topics you wouldn’t have thought of before. Awesome feminist and queer literature / theater. Although I will say the only other guy in my class came up to me and told me how interesting the play sounded. Which idk if that’s saying something but oh well.

Also I just happened to find a copy of this book in the Bard College free-use store and it’s even signed by Carolyn Gage! Yay!

4/5 really good and would recommend to everyone

[Mich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just amazing!!!

I really feel like I gain something precious from Carolyn Gage's writing! The best ones were The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist, and Artemisia and Hildegarde. But almost all of these plays made my heart ache and gave me a new perspective on living as a woman and a lesbian in a patriarchal world. I think these plays also challenge me to have real empathy and respect for other women and their methods of survival in said world.

[Lucy Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would love to see it performed. On the surface it follows a loose account of Joan of Arc's story, but really it's about women in society and what contortions they must make to fit within the confines of the roles decided for them, and what dangers lie in wait when they refuse to bend.

[Ashley Owens · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't take it seriously, maybe it was important for its day but really it just made me roll my eyes.

[Christiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the first two. Not very fond of some others, but I find a lot of her sentences hit the mark exactly

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

idk what i was expecting but i def thought this was goin be more historical based. not that it isn’t, more like educational was my expectation

[Sabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I was a heretic. A woman who hears voices is a lot more dangerous than a woman with an army."

"Every woman who's ashamed of her body is a victim of torture. Every woman who doubts her own judgement is a victim of torture. So just how many women do you know who haven't been pulled apart?"

A one-act, one-woman play, of what is essentially an extended monologue that metamorphoses the figure of Joan D’Arc into a vehicle for exposition, that circles around the historical treatment of female narrative’s, the conditions imposed on the way those narrative’s are told, and the general long and unending history of violence (physically, emotionally, and narratively) against non-conforming women, which Jean, the play argues, essentially embodies.

Even in text, the emotional impact is felt deeply. It’s confronting dialogue, as Jean holds the audience in check as her contemporaries, her historians, her perpetrators, her abusers, and her witnesses all at once. The rage from the character is externally palpable, and the ending impression is that the female trauma Jean embodies, is not only deeply contemporary, but an unending cycle of abuse across all cultures, one that women may forever be struggling to break.

"I hear a lot of talk about women forgiving men. I don't believe in it. I have experienced almost every form of cruelty men can inflict on women, and I am here to tell you that no woman can forgive it or ignore it, and furthermore, no woman should ever try. There is no such thing as forgiveness. There is only resolution. With abuse, you either resist it or you accept it, period."

"Most of us women who survive our own best efforts at self-destruction are pretty miraculous, don't you think?"

5/5 stars.

[Eleanor Cowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been six years since I saw Caitie Parsons of Montreal, Quebec, deliver the most passionate, intense, brilliant, convincing and heart-rending interpretation to Carolyn Gage's powerful, unforgettable play, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc. Faced with the themes of Joan's early grooming, conditioning, taboo training and misplaced loyalty, this play encouraged me to stand up for - and not sacrifice - my life!.

Eleanor Cowan, author of : A History of a Pedophile's Wife: Memoir of a Canadian Teacher and Writer

[Kiitos]

Brilliant!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good.

[Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

ya prolly had to be there. and i have been. i love her.