ABSTRACT

Plays about Joan of Arc – Shaw’s Saint Joan, Anouilh’s The Lark, Irene Fornes’ The Trial of Joan of Arc in a Matter of Faith – work in the retorts of Joan preserved in the transcripts of her interrogation at Rouen. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer is based on the transcript of a government inquiry into Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Courtroom transcripts supply the texts of Daniel Berrigan’s The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (concerning the destruction of draft files) and Peter Weiss’s The Investigation (concerning Auschwitz). If, a dramatic text professes to be the transcript of some earlier exchange (between characters), no less does it offer itself as a prescription for subsequent exchanges (between actors). Of course, no more than “transcript” does “prescription” by itself provide an adequate account of a theatre script.