Doubt
by John Patrick Shanley

Oct. 17 - Nov. 8, 2008

Directed by Michael Payne

"Doubt, a Parable" was the recipient of an extraordinary number of awards during its Broadway and Off-Broadway runs.

Its accolades include the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. Other Best Play nods came from the New York Drama Critics' Circle, the Drama Desk Awards and the Lucille Lortel Awards. Prior to this play, John Patrick Shanley is probably best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplay of "Moonstruck."

"Doubt, a Parable" is a fast-moving, intense story set in 1964 at St. Nicholas, a Catholic church and school in the Bronx. Sister Aloysius is the principal of the school, and she is having doubts about the moral character of the new priest who serves the parish and teaches physical education and religion to the students.

She enlists the help of a young eighth grade teacher, Sister James, asking her to watch for any suspicious activities between the priest and the boys at the school. Later, the sister holds a conference with the mother of a new student with whom she fears Father Flynn has had inappropriate contact.

As the play progresses, the plot becomes an explosive cat and mouse game between the older nun and the priest, as Sister Aloysius tries to force Father Flynn’s confession and resignation without any clear evidence of misconduct. However, after all the sparks fly, Shanley intentionally leaves the ending of his play ambiguous.

For the setting and the characters of the nuns, Shanley draws on his own experiences growing up in the Bronx attending Catholic schools. But while the play is rooted in his past, he intends its themes to reach beyond 1964 in a New York borough. In an interview, he explained, "I wanted to write a play embracing doubt. About the merit of doubt as opposed to certainty."

In a preface to the manuscript of the play, he writes: "It is Doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates, he's on the verge of growth." Although the play uses the idea of suspected sexual abuse within a Catholic parish as the driving force of its dramatic plot, Shanley says: "I wasn’t at all interested in the church scandals when I wrote the play. What interested me was the moral certainty that people had at that time [the early 1990s] about all kinds of things. And it was so deep, they couldn't see things that were right in front of them."