Rev. Danny Fisher

As a doctoral student, I don’t get to do quite as much recreational reading as I would like. Whenever people ask me if I’ve “read anything good,” the first things that spring to mind are usually academic resources for my exams/dissertation, which, generally speaking, aren’t the kinds of things people mean when they ask a question like that. (Not that Lars Fogelin’s Archaeology of Early Buddhism and Philip L. Culbertson’s Counseling Men aren’t worth strongly recommending.) I did manage to squeeze in a few good, non-Buddhist, non-chaplaincy-related materials this summer, however. The one that towers above the others in my mind is certainly John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt.

Written and first produced in 2005, it’s the most arresting piece of theater I’ve encountered since Tony Kushner’s epic Angels in America. (I’m not a die hard theater connoisseur, but I’m the only member of my family that doesn’t work in professional theater in some capacity, so I imagine that I manage to see/read more theater than the average bear.) My father has been recommending Doubt to me since he first saw it, and I finally sat down with his copy one night and read it straight through. The play is set in 1964 at a Catholic school in the Bronz that has recently accepted its first African-American student. The boy is ostracized by his peers and taken under the wing of a progressive-minded priest. When a warm-hearted and relatively innocent young nun sees the two go to the church rectory alone, another nun–a steely, older traditionalist already repulsed by the priest’s reformist tendencies–makes up her mind that sexual abuse has taken place and begins a crusade against him. Thus the stage is set for a powerful post-Iraq invasion/post-Cardinal Law contemplation on, among other things, organized religion, suspicion, investigation, secrecy, kindness, due process, and (of course) faith and doubt.

I read the play back in June. Though that’s not necessarily the most ideal way to meet a play for the first time, I still felt punched in the stomach by it. When I finally did see it performed last month (with a dear family friend playing the lead role), it still packed the same incredible punch. I think the less said about it, the better: it’s an intentionally terse, tight play, and to say a lot about it would spoil it for those of you who haven’t read it. I will say this, though: for all of its dark, heavy material, I felt a positive impact on my spirituality. Doubt traffics in confrontation with uncomfortable realities and very human frailties, but in that way we all must if we’re going to develop a mature spirituality. We’re not alone in our doubts, and, in fact, acknowledging that can help us build stronger communities. The play’s subtitle (“a parable”) and device of having the priest sermonize to the audience underscores this. I recommend Doubt to all of you. Read it, or see it any way you can.

You’ll all soon have a new way to see it, by the way: the film adaptation of the play hits theaters this winter. It stars Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), Amy Adams (Junebug), and Viola Davis (Solaris) in the four lead roles. Shanley (who won an Oscar in 1987 for writing Moonstruck) adapts and directs. Though film adaptations are always different animals than the plays they’re based on, it looks very true to the source from the looks of the trailer…