ATM Education · Digital Engagement Toolkit
Even Unto Death Toolkit
Practical pathways into memory, grief, testimony, domestic labor, institutional power, and moral courage.
Open the toolkit ↓At a Glance
This toolkit accompanies Even Unto Death, a historical drama centered not on Joan of Arc’s battlefield legend, but on the people who must live with her absence. Use it before the production, during a classroom or community conversation, or afterward for reflection and creative response.
Many kinds of groups
Educators, students, audiences, community groups, faith communities, and facilitators.
Engagement at every stage
Preparation, listening, discussion, writing, reflection, and historical inquiry.
Choose your own pathway
Move in order or select the sections that fit your people, time, purpose, and setting.
Start Here
Open the Even Unto Death Study Guide
Begin with the production guide for historical context, synopsis, characters, themes, vocabulary, and questions for reflection.
Open the Study GuideChoose a Pathway
There is no single correct route through the material. Begin with the needs and interests of the people in the room.
Context, inquiry, response
- Introduce the essential question.
- Review the historical context.
- Use before, during, and after prompts.
- Choose a writing or performance activity.
Witness and moral courage
- Explore grief and collective memory.
- Discuss institutional power.
- Consider women’s testimony.
- Reflect on the relationship between truth and justice.
Listen, notice, return
- Read the guide before listening.
- Notice domestic sound and silence.
- Return to one object or memory.
- Write about what remains with you.
What to Listen For
Memory in fragments
Each person remembers a different Jeannette. Notice how intimate details resist the official story.
Domestic labor
Bread, soup, water, cloth, fire, and table-setting are not background. They carry grief, endurance, and care.
Silence
Notice when silence protects, wounds, withholds, listens, or begins to change.
Institutional language
Listen for the words used to make violence appear moral, lawful, or holy.
Women’s testimony
Consider how private knowledge becomes public witness and moral authority.
Sound as place
Because this is an audio drama, breath, pace, distance, repetition, quiet, and ordinary household sounds build the world.
Listening prompt: When does the kitchen stop feeling like a private room and begin to feel like a place where history is being made?
Toolkit in Action
Choose one activity or combine several into a longer engagement. Times are flexible.
One Object
Choose an object from the play—a shell, bowl, rag, taper, comb, piece of linen, or bread dough. Write what it holds that an official record cannot.
Memory Map
List what three characters remember about Jeannette. Where do their memories overlap? Where do they resist a single story?
Silence Score
Identify a moment when silence carries meaning. Map the breaths, gestures, distances, and sounds that make the silence legible.
Domestic Action
Stage an ordinary task with emotional intention and minimal dialogue. Explore what pace, repetition, and sound reveal.
Official Story / Lived Story
Create two short accounts of the same event: one written by an institution and one by someone who lived through it. Compare what each version values or erases.
Witness Circle
Invite each person to name one truth a character carries. Discuss what makes testimony possible—and what conditions make speaking dangerous.
What This Toolkit Can Open
History and power
Explore who shapes official history, whose knowledge is treated as credible, and how ordinary people resist erasure.
Grief and action
Consider how private grief can become public testimony without becoming simple, tidy, or complete.
Gender and blame
Discuss how girls and women are shamed, punished, disbelieved, and made responsible for violence committed against them.
Care as moral practice
Notice how tending bodies, food, clothing, fire, and memory becomes a form of dignity and resistance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need prior knowledge of Joan of Arc?
No. The Study Guide provides the historical and dramatic context you need. The production is grounded in the family’s experience rather than an expectation that audiences arrive as historians.
Is this toolkit only for schools?
No. It is designed for educators, students, community groups, faith communities, facilitators, and individuals. Select the pathway that fits your setting.
Must we complete every activity?
No. Use the toolkit as a menu. One question or short activity can create a meaningful point of entry.
What makes this production useful for discussion?
It connects a familiar historical figure to larger questions about grief, institutional power, women’s testimony, moral courage, and the struggle over who controls a life’s meaning.
Continue Exploring
Use the Study Guide for deeper production context, return to ATM Education for additional learning materials, or contact Arizona Theatre Matters if you encounter a barrier.