Amirali Sharifi

No simple answers behind Shanley’s puzzling Doubt

Doubt, A Parable

Sept. 22 – Oct. 1 at 7:30 p.m., matinée show Sept. 29 at 12:30 p.m.
Timms Centre for the Arts (87 Ave. and 112 St.)
Written by John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Leigh Rivenbark
Starring Doug Mertz and Valerie Planche
Tickets $10 at the Timms box office

Opening Studio Theatre’s new season, Doubt, A Parable brings with it all the pervasive ambiguity that has made it both an acclaimed hit and a moral mindbender. A clean finish there is not, as Doubt has no intention of giving any easy answers.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning play chronicles the interchange between the traditional headmaster Sister Aloysius and the “modern” Father Flynn, suspected of engaging in an illicit relationship with a student at their shared Catholic elementary.

“The final act of the play happens when the house lights come up,” says director Leigh Rivenbark, echoing the words of playwright John Patrick Shanley.

Sitting at a makeshift desk in a Timms rehearsal hall, the busy Fine Arts graduate student makes time to explore just what this means for the audience.

“If the audience leaves this play and everybody says ‘he did it,’ we haven’t done our job. The audience should be debating in the streets, ferociously taking one side or the other about his guilt or innocence.

“(Shanley) leaves us with no clear conclusions, and in a sense he’s challenging the fact that we hold on to certainty as a way of protecting ourselves from the uncomfortable truths of reality. So the fact that he ends the play on an ambiguous note is purposeful: he’s asking us to sit in that uncomfortable place and see the world in all of its colours — not just a black and white world,” Rivenbark says.

Although set in 1964 Brooklyn, Doubt is a play with a message for our contemporary world. It contains echoes of the era in which it was written: the oft-lambasted Bush administration of the early 2000s.

“One of the things that inspired Patrick Shanley to write the play was the Iraq War,” Rivenbark says. “We all have memories of George Bush looking into the camera with absolute certainty and swearing to the American public Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact that he had no proof. The war inspired Shanley to question the belief that doubt is a weakness and certainty is a great virtue.

“I think Shanley wants us to step into discomfort. There’s a whole article he wrote on discomfort where he says essentially that people create artificial constructs in order to protect themselves from the discomforts of reality.”

The play reveals how doubt may not necessarily be the negative trap we so often spin it into. Rivenbark points to the play’s foreword as a particularly telling: “The beginning of change is the moment of doubt ... that crucial moment when I renew my humanity or become a lie.” These words also represent a deeply personal mantra for the director, returning to school after a number of years as the artistic director of Theatre New Brunswick, a decision he says he made to “renew his humanity.”

It’s fitting that Doubt’s complexity now reflects a new beginning for Rivenbark’s own artistic evolution.

“It’s funny, the play embodies my journey here in that I’ve learned to step into the unknown again,” Rivenbark says.

“Every day we unearth new pieces of gold, things that I haven’t seen … This is part of my thesis component, so I’ve written a 200-page thesis on this show. I know it pretty well. But every single day we unearth new things, which says to me this is a really great piece of writing — if it can be that engaging after writing a 200-page thesis.”

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