St. Joan

Antaeus Black Box

Written by: George Bernard Shaw
Directed by: Ann Noble

George Bernard Shaw’s delicious retelling of the Joan of Arc story brims with wit and spirit, but, of course, never shies from revealing the inevitable cruelty which comes when those who rule seek power over truth, dogma over dignity, and the law over a courageous, wild heart.

Cast

Julia Fletcher*

Robert de Baudricourt/D’Estivet
Julia Fletcher has been a theater professional for more than 35 years, working in new play development, as an adapter of the works of Shakespeare, as a director, an Equity stage manager, and a master teacher. She trained and worked as an actor with the American Conservatory Theatre, and has performed with the Old Globe, the Intiman, San Jose Rep, ACT/Seattle, Antaeus, P.C.P.A., and the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, among others. She was also the Founding Artistic Director of the Pacific Resident Theatre in Los Angeles.
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At ANTAEUS: Measure for Measure, Diana of Dobson's,  As You Like It, Henry IV Part I, Measure for Measure, and The Curse of Oedipus. Other theater: Vietgone (The Alley Theatre), Sense & Sensibility (South Coast Rep); Love's Labour's Lost, Edward III, and Cyrano de Bergerac (Colorado Shakespeare Festival); Hamlet (The 6th Act); Frankenstein (A Noise Within); The Hard Problem and Vietgone (LA Theatreworks); Gloria and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide (Curious Theatre Company); Colony Collapse (Boston Court Pasadena); Supper (Theatre of NOTE); Rose and the Rime (Sacred Fools); and 99 Histories (Artists at Play). She holds degrees in Theatre and Business from UNCo. DesireeMeeJung.com
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John Allee*

The Gentleman
John Allee is an Ovation Award nominee and ensemble member of Antaeus, where he has appeared in The Cripple of Inishmaan, Cloud 9, Uncle Vanya, The Crucible, You Can’t Take It with You, Peace in Our Time, The Malcontent, and more. Other Stage Highlights: The Mystery of Irma Vep, A Man for All Seasons, The Man Who Came to Dinner, 33 Variations (Actors Co-op); Much Ado About Nothing (Kingsmen Shakespeare Co); Little Shop of Horrors (Arizona Theatre Company); Assassins (Los Angeles Theatre Center); Alone Together (Pasadena Playhouse); A Midsummer Night's Dream (LA Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera); One Thousand Cranes (Mark Taper Forum); and Chaplin (Pre-Broadway). On TV, he played Pasha on the Starz series Flesh and Bone. Podcast audiences can hear him on Two Dead Girls in Jubeliene. John is also an award-winning singer-songwriter and recording artist. His latest album is Past Imperfect. Johnallee.com
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Sola Bamis

Chaplain de Stogumber

Fran Bennett*

The Inquisitor
At ANTAEUS: Macbeth (Witch One); The Crucible (Rebecca Nurse). Guthrie Theater: Twelve seasons as actress, voice and movement director, including Furies (Chorus Leader) in Tyrone Guthrie’s House of Atreus. Other theater: Boston Court, REDCAT, South Coast Rep, Getty Villa’s Outdoor Theater in the inaugural production Hippolytos; Hecuba in Cavander’s The Greeks at The Back Alley Theater; plus many roles with LAWSC (Ovation Award). Television: includes series regular and Guest Star in premier TV shows. Films Include: Wes Craven’s Newest Nightmare and Crazy as Hell. Awards include: NAACP Theatre Award, Best Female Performance for Lear in the CNP production of King Lear; First AEA/AFTRA/SAG Diversity Honor Award; Watts Village Theater Company’s 2008 “Blazing the Trail Award”; Playwrights’ Arena, Outstanding Contribution to the Los Angeles.
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Julia Davis*

Bluebeard/Courcelles
Julia Davis earned her BA in Theatre Arts at SFSU and her MFA in Acting at USC.  At ANTAEUS: As You Like It, Top GirlsClassicsFest readings of Beyond the Horizon, Little Women and Picnic.  Other credits include Robin Hood at South Coast Rep, For the Birds at The Getty Villa, That Beautiful Laugh at Long Beach Playhouse and Everything you Touch at Theatre @ Boston Court (u/s).  She has also toured with a two-person clown show, The Day They Hung the Elephant (she plays the elephant).  Be sure to check her out as a terrible acting student in the new web series, Break A Hip.  Proud member of Four Clowns, the Troubadour Theatre Company, and AEA.
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At ANTAEUS:  Phaedra, Legal Briefs, and several ClassicsFests, among others. Other regional credits include The Mark Taper Forum, The Old Globe Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Arizona Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, La Mirada Civic Theater, The Magic Theater, S.F., A Noise Within, Berkeley Shakespeare Festival and the PCPA/Solvang Theaterfest. Her credits also include many film and television roles.
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Karianne Flaathen*

Steward/Ladvenu
At ANTAEUS: Wedding BandTop GirlsPeace In Our Time and many ClassicsFest readings. A2 productions include: CelebrationThe TypistsThe Thin Man and The After-Dinner Joke. UK Theatre: The Woman In Black (No.1 UK and Asia Tour), The Gift(London Tour), The Two Noble Kinsman(Latchmere Theatre, Battersea). Film: Diani & Devine Meet The ApocalypseI Am IThe Selling. Can also be seen on the Web in: The SanctumMary OlsonPucker and others. Trained at Drama Studio London and SUNY Purchase. Website: karianneflaathen.com
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Ann Noble*

Stage Directions
Ann Noble is a Chicago Native with over twenty-five years of professional experience in the theatre as an actor, playwright, director and educator.  In addition to teaching at Antaeus, she currently teaches at Berg Studios (Technique I & II) as well as at the Hyperion Arts Center/Studio A Dance (Scene Study).  As a director, her recent credits include Smoke with LifeChild Productions and Moonshine Mamas with Two Heads Are Better Productions.  With Antaeus, she recently directed two of the Classic Sunday Readings of Shaw’s St. Joan and Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure, which she is slated to co-direct in its full production this winter with Armin Shimerman.  As an actor, her credits with Antaeus are Hedda Gabler, The Crucible, Macbeth, Peace In Our Time, The Liar and The Malcontent.  Her other theatre acting credits include: BLISS, or Emily Post is Dead  with Moving Arts; The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, and Stanley Ann: The Unlikely Story of Barack Obama’s Mother all with LA’s LGBT Center; Other Desert Cities with ICT of Long Beach; American Dead with Rogue Machine; Orange Flower Water with the Victory; Belfry with Malibu Playhouse; An Ideal Husband with Sierra Madre Playhouse; The Fall To Earth, Bedroom Farce and London’s Scars with the Odyssey; Betrayal with ETC of Santa Barbara; Sidhe, And Neither Have I Wings To Fly, The Friendly Hour, Big Death & Little Death, Shove and Bunbury all with the Road; and over six productions with South Coast Rep.  She also teaches acting and writing to incarcerated/at risk youth at several schools/institutions around LA including Homeboy Industries, and also works as a theatre director/instructor for youth at LA’s LGBT Center and LA’s Museum of the Holocaust.  She is the current Casting Associate for Antaeus, and, also, will be directing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for Warriors For Peace this fall.
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Elizabeth Swain

Earl of Warwick

Elizabeth Swain is an actor, director and teacher, and a member of Antaeus. Directing includes The Winter's Tale (Antaeus); Hamlet (Antaeus); Measure for Measure (co-directed with Armin Shimerman (Antaeus); Romeo and Juliet and Two Noble Kinsmen (Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival); An Evening of Betrayal (The 6th Act); 3 Hamlets; 2 Macbeths; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Malcontent (Antaeus); The Rover and The Lucky Chance; and several new plays, most recently The Gatekeepers by Dan Perry. She directed a zoom production of The Comedy of Errors for the Classical Theatre Lab, for whom she has directed many staged readings, including Tartuffe, Richard I & II. For Antaeus she has directed six ClassicsFest readings.

As an actor she has worked on Broadway, Off Broadway and in regional theaters, including The LA Women’s Shakespeare Company and 3 Antaeus productions. On TV she was a regular on Guiding Light and As the World Turns and made guest appearances on many other daytime shows including Dark Shadows.

She has taught at Cal Arts, CSULB, Barnard College, and is Professor Emerita at Marymount Manhattan College. She was awarded an NEH Fellowship to study at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and holds a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center. Website: elizabethswain.net

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Rebecca Mozo*

Dauphin, later King Charles
At ANTAEUS: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Uncle Vanya, Top Girls, Mrs. Warren’s Profession (Ovation Nomination), Peace in Our Time, King Lear, Cousin Bette and Pera Palas. With South Coast Repertory: Going to A Place Where You Already Are (World Premiere), Five Mile Lake (World Premiere), 4000 Miles, The Parisian Woman (World Premiere), In the Next Room or the vibrator play, A Wrinkle in Time, Emilie (World Premiere) The Heiress and Doubt, a parable. Her other theater credits include Cock at Rogue Machine Theatre (Ovation Award); We Are Proud to Present... at The Matrix Theatre; The Savannah Disputation, Educating Rita and Trying at The Colony Theatre Company; The Cherry Orchard at Center Theatre Group. Film and Television credits include: You Bury Your Own, Zerophilia, Headless Horseman, The Waterhole, Cold Case, Medium, Modern Family, Break a Hip and Kittens in a Cage. She has also narrated several audiobooks including The Vampire Diaries series as well as Sara B. Larson’s DEFY series. She will be featured alongside 8 other LA-based theater actors in the documentary LOVE 99, narrated by Helen Mirren. Mozo earned her BFA from Rutgers University and studied at The Globe Theatre in London.
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Laura Gardner

The Archbishop

Other

Dylan Jones is a native Angelina, proud Antaeus A2 & Elephant Theater Company member.  Theatrical highlights include Theatre Movement Bazaar’s Track 3, the Elephant’s Block Nine and 7 Redneck Cheerleaders, her one-woman show Pink Champagne and Zoo District’s The Master and Margarita. She can be seen in various television shows and films and is known as the Blueshammer girl in the cult classic Ghost World.  Find her any night singing and dancing with her band FREAKSTAR or any morning with Gwendolyn & the Good Time Gang.  She enjoys long walks at sunset and lepidoptery.
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A proud member of the Antaeus Company since 1991, Melinda has appeared in Company productions of Peace in Our Time, Pera Palas, The Man Who Had All The Luck, Patience, The Long Christmas Dinner, Trial By Jury, Tonight at 8:30, The Plot To Overthrow Christmas among others as well as countless readings, workshops and presentations. In the Southern California theater community she has appeared on a number of stages and received an Ovation nomination for her work in The Illustrated Woman and won Dramalogue awards for Fools Die Fast and for her portrayal as Eleonora Duse in Lillian Groag’s The Ladies of the Camellias.  She has worked at regional theaters across the country (most recently as Agatha Christie in Agatha Christie & the BBC Murders), has made numerous guest appearances on television, has lent her talents to several independent films and writes and performs radio comedy with her darling husband, Philip Proctor.
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Production Team

Ann Noble

Director
Ann Noble is a Chicago Native with over twenty-five years of professional experience in the theatre as an actor, playwright, director and educator.  In addition to teaching at Antaeus, she currently teaches at Berg Studios (Technique I & II) as well as at the Hyperion Arts Center/Studio A Dance (Scene Study).  As a director, her recent credits include Smoke with LifeChild Productions and Moonshine Mamas with Two Heads Are Better Productions.  With Antaeus, she recently directed two of the Classic Sunday Readings of Shaw’s St. Joan and Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure, which she is slated to co-direct in its full production this winter with Armin Shimerman.  As an actor, her credits with Antaeus are Hedda Gabler, The Crucible, Macbeth, Peace In Our Time, The Liar and The Malcontent.  Her other theatre acting credits include: BLISS, or Emily Post is Dead  with Moving Arts; The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, and Stanley Ann: The Unlikely Story of Barack Obama’s Mother all with LA’s LGBT Center; Other Desert Cities with ICT of Long Beach; American Dead with Rogue Machine; Orange Flower Water with the Victory; Belfry with Malibu Playhouse; An Ideal Husband with Sierra Madre Playhouse; The Fall To Earth, Bedroom Farce and London’s Scars with the Odyssey; Betrayal with ETC of Santa Barbara; Sidhe, And Neither Have I Wings To Fly, The Friendly Hour, Big Death & Little Death, Shove and Bunbury all with the Road; and over six productions with South Coast Rep.  She also teaches acting and writing to incarcerated/at risk youth at several schools/institutions around LA including Homeboy Industries, and also works as a theatre director/instructor for youth at LA’s LGBT Center and LA’s Museum of the Holocaust.  She is the current Casting Associate for Antaeus, and, also, will be directing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for Warriors For Peace this fall.

George Bernard Shaw

Writer
*member, Actor’s Equity Association, the union of professional Actors and Stage Managers in the U.S. This production is presented under the auspices of the Actors’ Equity Los Angeles Membership Company Rule