Doubt: A Parable, Program Notes

“Written with an uncanny blend of compassion and detachment, it is an inspired study in moral uncertainty with the compellingly certain structure of an old-fashioned detective drama.  Even as Doubt holds your conscious attention as an intelligently measured debate play, it sends off stealth charges that go deeper emotionally.”

                           --New York Times

John Patrick Shanley won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his play, Doubt. He dedicates it “to the many orders of Catholic nuns who have devoted their lives to serving others in hospitals, schools and retirement homes.  Though they have been much maligned and ridiculed, who among us has been so generous?” Here are excerpts from Shanley’s preface to his play:

“What’s under a play?  What holds it up?  You might as well ask what’s under me?  On what am I built?  There’s something silent under every person and under every play.  There is something unsaid under any given society as well.

“There’s a symptom apparent in America right now.  It’s evident in political talk shows, in entertainment coverage, in artistic criticism of every kind, in religious discussion… Discussion has given way to debate.  Communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere.  Why? Maybe it’s because deep down under the chatter we have come to a place where we know that we don’t know…anything.  But nobody’s willing to say that.

“Let me ask you.  Have you ever held a position in an argument past the point of comfort?  Have you ever defended a way of life you were on the verge of exhausting? Have you ever given service to a creed you longer utterly believed? Have you ever told a girl you loved her and felt the faint nausea of eroding conviction? I have.  That’s an interesting moment.  For a playwright it’s the beginning of an idea.  I saw a piece of real estate on which I might build a play, a play that sat on something silent in my life and in my time.  I started with a title: Doubt.
  
“What is Doubt?...I know my answers to so many questions, as do you.  What was your father like? Do you believe in God?  Who’s your best friend?  What do you want?  Your answers are your current topography, seemingly permanent, but deceptively so.  Because under that face of easy response there is another You.  And this wordless Being moves just as the instant moves; it presses upward without explanation, fluid and wordless, until resisting consciousness has no choice but to give way.

“It is Doubt that changes things.  When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he’s on the verge of growth.  The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake; like you’ve gone the wrong way and you’re lost.  But this is just emotion longing for the familiar.  Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind.  Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present.

“I’ve set my story in 1964,when not just me but the whole world seemed to be going through some kind of vast puberty.  The old ways were still dominant in behavior, dress, morality, world view…I was in a Catholic church school in the Bronx, run by Sisters of Charity.  These women dressed in black, believed in Hell, obeyed their male counterparts, and educated us.  The faith, which held us together, went beyond the precincts of religion.  It was a shared dream we all agreed to call Reality.  We didn’t know it, but we had a deal, a social contract.  We would all believe the same thing.  We would all believe.  As a result we were terribly vulnerable to anyone who chose to hunt us.  When trust is the order of the day, predators are free to plunder…And the shepherds, so invested in the surface, sacrificed actual good for perceived virtue.

“I have never forgotten the lessons of that era, nor learned them well enough. I still long for a shared certainty…But I have been led by the bitter necessities of an interesting life to value that age-old practice of the wise: Doubt.…You may come out of my play uncertain.  You may want to be sure.  Look down on that feeling.   We’ve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty.”

                              --John Patrick Shanley

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