Luzerner Rundschau, Nick Schwery, 29.3.2014

"The exclamation mark is not in the title for nothing, it really is the program. Johanna! takes up the material of Joan of Arc and demands a lot from the audience at the Lucerne Theater, but gives them even more in return.

Johanna! by director Sabine Auf der Heyde is not a play in the classical sense, as it lacks a concrete plot. It is much more an exploration, an examination of a historical person, a heroine, a myth - Joan of Arc, better known to us as Jeanne d'Arc, who was born in 1412 to a wealthy French peasant family in the middle of the Hundred Years' War. (...)

The material is realized in such a complex and courageous way that the audience could occasionally feel overwhelmed. One may slide impatiently back and forth on the theater seat because the absurdly long and repetitive trial against Johanna is so grueling that one would like to leave. However, it is these changes of pace and perspective that make the play so interesting, so existential. (…) Those who choose to engage in this challenge will be rewarded with a performance that gets under your skin and encourages you to reflect on yourself, the world and its heroes and myths. Also because you can feel that the actresses lose themselves completely in their reflections on Johanna, giving her an impressive, multi-layered face. The persevering audience thanked this masterpiece with long-lasting, sometimes frenetic and always warm applause."

SRF Radio Kultur, Thomas Heeb, 29.3. 2014

Joan, the Maid of Orléans, is a myth - not only in France. Her unconditional fight for freedom to the death still raises questions. Director Sabine Auf der Heyde explores these with the play “Johanna!” at the Lucerne Theater - without any easy answers.

Sabine Auf der Heyde drew inspiration for her production of this material from various sources about Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans. At the Lucerne Theater, Ann Heine therefore puts a lecture hall on stage. Four students take it in turns to slip into the role of Joan and the other protagonists. At the top of the stage is Jacob Suske, who provides the spherical music.

But he also gives voice to the Catholic Church, which interrogates Johanna again and again. Why did she act the way she did, what voices did she hear, why did she wear men's clothing? The interrogation is a kind of torture that will be followed by even more violent forms. The recordings of other contemporaries who also acted against the law and regulations - in the unconditional belief that they were doing the right thing - are also disturbing. The whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning have their say - but also the assassin Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway.

Who was Joan of Arc really and what does her story mean today? Where does faith end and the political instrumentalisation of a myth begin? There are no clear answers in Lucerne's theater. But the play “Johanna!” poses interesting and exciting questions.

null41.ch, Aurel Jörg, 28.3. 2014

In “Johanna!”, Sabine Auf der Heyde uses Joan of Arc to stage a daring play about historicity on the stage of the Lucerne Theater. Right from the start, Auf der Heyde makes it clear how freely she intends to deal with the woman shrouded in legend: Rubens' painting, which depicts Joan on her knees and praying, is placed in front of the audience as a distorted fabric image that shimmers through and takes up the stage. The perfect projection surface! The image only lasts for a short time and is dismantled within the first few minutes; the audience is given a view of a lecture hall seat. What follows is a collage of material from Felicitas Hoppe, Friedrich Schiller, Edward Snowden and Anders Behring Breivik. Last night's performance should be seen in the context of Auf der Heyde's production last season: “Mary Stuart” was a resounding success with audiences and critics alike, which may explain why she was given carte blanche in the current play by Theater an der Reuss. People trust the woman and have great confidence in her - and rightly so. Auf der Heyde examines the numerous versions of Johanna's life stories and their reception with a keen sense of current affairs. In a seemingly endless and repetitive interrogation situation, in which the live musician Jacob Suske briefly acts as interrogator, the categories that are supposed to capture Johanna's “misdeeds” are reduced to absurdity. This demands a lot from the audience, is courageously staged and prompts one or two angry premiere guests to leave the auditorium early. Lucerne is not Berlin. Once “Johanna!” has been uncovered and the narratives of church and state are exposed as means of power, the audience in central Switzerland is kept on its toes: Is Anders Behring Breivik, terrorist from Norway, a freedom fighter? Does Johanna's moral claim follow the same pattern as Snowden's? What separates conviction from delusion? Johanna is also shown in Lucerne as a tool to be used by power-hungry men according to their purposes, depending on the direction of the wind. Despite this, Auf der Heyde does not want Joan of Arc to be seen as a victim; she casts Joan with five strong actresses, the youngest of whom is only ten years old.