A “Radically Innovative” ‘Saint Joan’: Chatting with the Collective Behind It All
This December, The Spire is welcoming multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, and multi-Joan. Living Edge Collective is bringing to the stage a workshop presentation of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. The company strives to engage artists in ecological collaboration, bringing beautiful intention into their work.
Living Edge situates Saint Joan “in this sanctuary of echo and sonic revelry, our production explores the idea of seven different Joans meeting to characterize the many architects of her icon and agents of her execution.” Last week, I was lucky enough to unpack this with four artists behind the presentation. Sitting down over Zoom with Director Jo Pagnan and three of the performers Fatuma Adar, Germaine Konji, and Clarke Blair, I felt very lucky to be enveloped by a myriad of beautiful stories and deep collaborative connections.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
After getting acquainted, we dove into conversation and I was immediately steeped in the thoughtfulness of Living Edge. Also the founder of the collective, Pagnan says, “Living Edge has always been sort of within me and my arts practice as a freelance theatre artist and scenographer… Whenever I’ve sat in the director’s seat or self-produced my own creations or interests, things that I think are fascinating—[it] has always been very eco-minded and I think it came time to give it a name: Living Edge. This idea—the edge between our theatre space, or our known world, and the natural world, and living in that beautiful growth point between the two—of storytelling and ecology.”
The company has had the wonderful opportunity to rehearse at the Thousand Islands Playhouse and develop their relationships as an ensemble. “If it wasn’t for this show, I don’t know when I would have been like, ‘Hey, let’s go to Gananoque!’ The fact that we were able to turn this experience to not only being in a new environment but also it’s the first time I’ve been so immersed with artists,” Adar notes. “We’re living together and we get to see each other after work and there’s something so wholly about it.”
Beyond the budding connections as a company, Konji speaks to their connection with nature. “On my own decolonial journey I think a discovery or something that I’m trying to action myself towards is connection to the land as part of my process as an artist and actually as a real task of what it means to be a creator,” they say. “To me that means it’s important to form a relationship with the community, with the natural environment that I’m in while I’m there so that something about my practice isn’t rooted in so much extraction as we understand artistry to be under a very capitalist model of engaging.”
Blair adds, “Having this beautiful privilege to be surrounded by nature and to have the support of the river next to us, I’m really trying to slow myself down and also download this brilliant process that we’ve been in as well and not just push past it.”
When it comes to working with Living Edge, in addition to engaging with the ecological mandate, a draw for Konji came from connection and excitement. “I think as an artist, you’re instinctively drawn to the people that make it easiest for you to arrive as yourself, and that’s certainly the case for me, and Jo was definitely one of those people… When the invitation to do this project came along, it was already like a 90% yes for me. And then what sent it over the edge was reading the incredible premise that Jo had for the piece—genderqueer, multiple perspective, reimagining of Saint Joan, a piece that is one of my favorite plays of all time. I was like, ‘Yup, sign me up’. In the time we’re in, I couldn’t, honestly, think of another piece to be working on that feels more relevant and present to me, and I think also to our larger social fabric.”
In working on Saint Joan, Blair describes, “Everyone gets to walk into the space with their craft and their curiosity and the multi-dimensional facets of their craft too, and to feel respected, not only from the people at the quote, unquote head of the room, but also everyone else in the room, this feels like a very radically innovative and supportive working environment.”
How did this immensely creative project begin? Pagnan says, “I was raised within the Catholic faith, and had to go through a lot of really interesting letters that were written by different bishops and popes regarding genderqueerness. And I was quite, quite close to it, but Joan always was like an icon to me that helped me get through some of the worst parts of my life… But why we got to Joan now is I really wanted to bring it, bring it back to the multiplicity of the icon of Joan being co-opted by so many different voices. And not voices that are just the Catholic faith, not just genderqueer, not just woman versus non-binary versus transfemme; this multiplicity of what does Joan represent?”
In their process of weaving through the multiplicity of Joan, the company has layers upon layers to dig into. “It’s been interesting to take a look at the way history gets told and how it gets edited, depending on who is telling it,” says Konji. “And that’s relevant for me, personally, but also for us as we work on this particular play, looking at—okay, if we’re really putting Joan at the centre here, what are the liberties, perhaps taken by the playwright? What [does] history, like the factual history, say in comparison to that? And is there any negotiation to be done there?”
Adar has been reflecting on the differences and similarities between our present day and Shaw’s time of writing Saint Joan. “What I really love about this process is there seems to be a collective dramaturging that we’re all doing as we’re dissecting… [Having] conversations about the moments that mean most to people in the Shaw play, and the things that feel different to now, but there were so many moments that—we were all just taken by very much history repeating itself. And I think if it wasn’t for this kind of collective all holding space for that, we wouldn’t really be able to get into the work and craft.”
Getting into the meat of that collective dramaturging, Blair says, “The practical unpacking is 10 or 12 of us sitting around in a circle, elbow deep in this text, and looking at history, looking at word definition, looking at Catholic Church references that would have been so known of the time, but now as a 2024 lens, we have to look back into it and be like, does this actually mean what we think it means?”
In addition to taking a deep dive into text, development of the presentation has spread far beyond working strictly with the script. “I’ve never experienced a workshop where all elements of a production are being workshopped,” says Adar. “What’s so exciting is that we’re working with JB Nelles on costuming, we’ve got Adrian [Shepherd-Gawinski] on sound, and I, as somebody who’s gone through workshop processes, sometimes it’s like, we only got money for text so we’re just going to do that. But for every element of this to be explored in this space as we all discover a story, has for me, as an artist, personally set a new bar for what workshops should be… If I had to make a note to the arts world in general, [it] is that these are the kind of things that should be given funds and resources to continue developing.”
As we wrap up the interview in preparation of the company’s impending rehearsal, Pagnan notes the support of the collective throughout the process. “All the people here inspire me to be me, and I would love for more of the world to see their work. I just want to scream it from the rooftops. Please see these incredible people beyond what we’re doing together right now.”
More details about Living Edge and their production of ‘Saint Joan’ can be found here. Find more about the collective here. Keep up with Jo Pagnan, Fatuma Adar, Germaine Konji, and Clarke Blair on Instagram by clicking their name.
