by Kirby Lindsay, posted 7 February 2014
From February 14th – March 1st, Stone Soup Theatre will present a nuanced play about moral certainty; about a clash of wills and generational viewpoints. ‘Doubt, A Parable,’ the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning play written by John Patrick Shanley, is directed by Maureen Hawkins, and will carry audiences back to 1964 and the era when the social contract started to crack, and doubt began to appear.
This production of ‘Doubt’ features the talented cast of Regan Dickey, Eva Abram, Maureen Miko and Jaryl Draper. These actors inhabit Shanley’s characters and create, through passion and action, a question. As Shanley explained in his preface to his play, “Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite – it is a passionate exercise.”
Never Know
For this production Draper has the delicate yet rich role of ‘Father Flynn’, a priest of talent, charisma, and, possibly, scandalous interests. Hawkins admitted that although she had worked with Draper before, when she cast this show she wasn’t sure about him. “I thought he was too young,” she admitted. However, at open auditions, she realized, “he brings a subtlety and a truth to Father Flynn.”
Father Flynn is a role that Hawkins expects most male actors long to play. Draper agreed. It is a role of careful balance, since the doubt Shanley presents is dependent upon Father Flynn.
This presents another chance to see Draper play a central role at Stone Soup, and another man of extremely questionable character. In the 2011 production of ‘How I Learned To Drive’, Draper played ‘Uncle Peck’, a pedophile fascinated with his niece. When asked about ‘How I Learned…,’ Draper explained, “It was a love story. There was nothing wrong.” It was a perverse view of the story, but in keeps in perfect step with Draper’s character as ‘Uncle Peck.’
For ‘Doubt’, he has taken similar steps to inhabit Father Flynn, and give him a past although the script leaves this unsaid. “It’s been quite fun delving into the back story,” Draper said. “You take whatever the playwright gives you,” he explained, and figure out what led the character there and what keeps him moving forward.
“I’m hoping everyone has no idea,” Draper said about the play’s final outcome. In his preface, Shanley also gives this as his goal, “You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure… We’ve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word.” As the director clarified about this play, “it’s about doubt,” Hawkins said. “And being in doubt,” Draper added. “And certitude,” Hawkins finished.
A Lot Left To The Actor
Miko, the Stone Soup Theatre’s Artistic Director, chose this play and she’s taken on the other central role within it, that of Sister Aloysius. “It’s a very big, and consuming role,” Hawkins observed, and easy to play too simply. “I think of her as a crusader,” Hawkins said of the role, “I think she has a mandate and a mission.” Yet, like Father Flynn, Shanley has written a complex role that intends to show weakness that resides at the center of this character’s conviction.
Both Draper and Hawkins praised the award-winning playwright, and his carefully crafted play. “He leaves a lot to the actor,” Draper admitted about Shanley, “I don’t know how he did it.” The play gives the actors and the audience enough to understand, without answering the questions it raises.
Draper hasn’t seen any previous stagings of this work, or the award-winning film which starred Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hawkins did see a professional production of it, and she learned an important lesson there. “The Broadway show gave me ideas about how not to do it,” she explained. “The thing about this play is its sparsity,” Hawkins explained, and how Shanley gives without giving anything away. “A lot of plays are over-written,” she observed.
“I like that it’s not so wordy,” Draper said, “I think he wanted not to give anyone time to think.” Hawkins and Draper have previously worked, together, on plays that required careful attention to every word, precisely as written, like their work on the Stone Soup presentation of ‘Language Art,’ and the short works of David Ives and Shel Silverstein. With Shanley, “I think it’s more about punctuation with him,” Draper said. Rather than remembering each word, he’s had to work out why a comma was used rather than a period.
As Things Change
“It’s not anti-Catholic,” Hawkins insisted. The play does take place during a pivotal time in the history of the Catholic Church – and for those in religious life – but Draper and Hawkins saw that as a choice setting for what Shanley wants to say and do. In his preface, again, the playwright explained, “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.”
“This particular script wouldn’t be written today,” Hawkins acknowledged. With the current fears, and certitude, about the corruptibility of the clergy, it might make ‘Doubt’ less doubtful. Draper actually hopes to use that modern belief – in the worst – to give audiences more to puzzle about in Father Flynn.
See Draper, Miko and the rest of this carefully chosen cast, under the direction of Hawkins, challenge certitude and bring this empathetic, nuanced play to life. Tickets to ‘Doubt, A Parable’ can be purchased on-line through Brown Paper Tickets, or through the Stone Soup Box Office at 206/633-1883. Performed in the intimate space of the DownStage Theater, seating is limited so purchase your tickets today!
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