Spreading the seeds
of ‘Doubt’

By Rita Charleston
For the Times

Set against the backdrop of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, Doubt, the story of a strong-minded woman faced with a difficult decision, makes its final tour stop at the Merriam Theater from May 15 to 20.
Multi-award winner Cherry Jones reprises her Tony Award-winning role as that woman, Sister Aloysius, a role that she originated in 2005. Along with the Tony, this role also earned Jones her Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortell Award and an Obie Award.
Doubt dramatized the insidious uncertainty that arises when formidable old-school principal Sister Aloysius suspects the charming young Father Flynn of seducing and sexually molesting an emotionally isolated and tormented eighth-grade boy — the only black child in the entire school. Dogged in her determination to protect the young boy, and other boys from further abuse, the sister enlists the novice classroom teacher Sister James to be vigilant in observing anything unusual in her students’ behavior.
Eventually, ideologies about teaching, parenting, accusing, judging and protecting religious institutional traditions all come into question.
"People tend to think this play is about pedophilia. but it’s not," Jones said. "It’s a play about doubt and uncertainty, and our need as a society to know that we’re right. We are reassured by certainty and uncomfortable with uncertainty.
"And it’s about opening one’s heart and mind to listen — to really listen. We don’t do that anymore. We come into arguments with our minds firmly made up, and we shout at each other from those entrenched decisions."
Because the role of Sister Aloysius takes a tremendous amount of energy and Jones has given her a sort of broken physicality, she described the role this way: "I explain that she had married as a young woman — a woman whose husband died in World War II. She never had children, and I explain that away by the fact that she had a hysterectomy at a younger age. In 1964, at the age of 64, she’s now a woman in poor health and very frail. I’ve given myself that direction, so it’s a very difficult challenge for ninety minutes each night."
A veteran stage actress, Jones has also been seen in many Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional productions. She also has extensive film and TV credits and has won many awards aside from the ones she received for Doubt.
Born in 1956 in Paris, Tenn., Jones said she wanted to be an actress from the time she was a little girl, gathering encouragement from her grandmother who, said Jones, had she been born in a different time and place, might well have gone on to become a silent film star.
Jones ultimately graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA in drama. "I then went to New York, scooped ice cream, and then went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music Theater Company, which was my springboard to the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts," she said. "I spent ten years there solidifying what I learned as a youngster."
Today, although she’s been working steadily on stages for the last three years and feels that she may now need a break, she does say being on stage is like home.
"There’s that magic moment when everyone has shown up on the same night listening to what we have to say," Jones said. "It’s a kind of electricity that’s going back and forth between those of us on stage and those in the audience. It’s a real thrill because you’re making a connection with these brilliant words and ideas with an entire body of people at once.
"And it will never happen again. There’s just that one moment that night and that’s it. Audiences vary greatly night to night, and you can feel that on stage. And never recreate that moment again." ••
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