based on a gap in Friedrich Schiller's «The Maid of Orleans»

by Marie Schleef and ensemble

From May 1430 to May 1431, the infamous Joan of Arc was imprisoned while awaiting execution. It was a fatal year spent in isolation. Yet Friedrich Schiller chose to omit this period from his 1801 play The Maid of Orleans. In his version, she dies on the battlefield, a classic heroine.

Are You Ready to Die? —the question asked in US prisons prior to execution—explores this gap in the theatrical canon and asks: What if Joan of Arc were alive today? How many years or decades would she have to spend on death row? What would her existence in this liminal space between life and death be like? And how would she react if she found out that her last day was approaching?

The play uses a female perspective to address the global phenomenon of corporal punishment. It translates the strictly regimented daily routine of solitary confinement on death row and the ritualized path to execution into an audiovisual, meditative, slow-motion composition that does not use spoken words.