About the Play:

Doubt has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, Female/Female Scenes, Female/Male Scenes, and Three-Person Scenes.

Doubt: A Parable is a full-length drama by John Patrick Shanley. Suspicions surface at a Catholic school in the Bronx about a charismatic young priest's ambiguous relationship with a troubled young man – the school's first Black student. Absent hard proof, Sister Aloysius, the strict principal, tries to protect the innocent – but is she doing God's work or is her certitude actually pride? Doubt is a searing masterwork by John Patrick Shanley about of faith, morality, and the complexity of truth.

Doubt opens amidst the social and political change of the 1960s. Sister Aloysius, the rigid, by-the-book principal of a Bronx parish school, is more feared than admired by her students. Her polar opposite seems to be the charismatic priest Father Flynn, who has a natural connection to the pupils. Yet, beneath the surface of this seemingly harmonious environment, whispers of discontent and suspicion begin to emerge about Father Flynn's actions. But is there hard proof of any misconduct? When Sister Aloysius learns of his potentially objectionable interest in the school's first and only Black student, the progressive priest and traditional nun are drawn into a battle of wills. Doubts grow about his innocence or guilt, motivations are challenged, and alliances are formed with possibly irreversible consequences for all involved. Doubt: A Parable is an exquisite, potent drama that will raise questions and answers none, leaving the audience to ponder the nature of certainty and doubt.

Why you should read this play: John Patrick Shanley – the Bronx-born-and-bred playwright – delves into the murky shadows of moral certainty, with his characters always balancing on the thin line between truth and consequences. This gripping, suspense-filled tug-of-war between a priest and a strong-minded nun dramatizes issues straight from today's headlines within a world re-created with knowing detail and a judicious eye.

Doubt premiered in 2004 at the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) in a stunning, sold-out production. It transferred to Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre and won the Tony Award for Best Broadway Play, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, The Drama League Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. John Patrick Shanley also wrote and directed a critically acclaimed film version of Doubt which starred Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn. This brilliant and powerful drama has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 1 male

What people say:

"A superb new drama written by John Patrick Shanley. 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. One of the year's ten best." — The New York Times

"The best new play of the season. That rarity of rarities, an issue-driven play that is unpreachy, thought-provoking, and so full of high drama that the audience with which I saw it gasped out loud a half-dozen times at its startling twists and turns. Mr. Shanley deserves the highest possible praise: he doesn’t try to talk you into doing anything but thinking-hard-about the gnarly complexity of human behavior." — The Wall Street Journal

"[The] #1 show of the year. How splendid it feels to be trusted with such passionate, exquisite ambiguity unlike anything we have seen from this prolific playwright so far. Blunt yet subtle, manipulative but full of empathy for all sides, the play is set in 1964 but could not be more timely. Doubt is a lean, potent drama… passionate, exquisite, important, and engrossing." — New York Newsday

"All the elements come invigoratingly together like clockwork in John Patrick Shanley's provocative new play, Doubt, a gripping story of suspicion cast on a priest's behavior that is less about scandal than about fascinatingly nuanced questions of moral certainty. Something rare for this season: a laudable new American play." — Variety

"A beautifully balanced drama. Shanley is a writer working at the top of his craft, making the most of a muted but evocative palette in the pursuit of truth's shadows. Here, for the first time in a long time, is a play that is about something." — Chicago Tribune

"An eloquent and provocative investigation of truth and consequences. A gripping mystery, tightly written." — Time Out New York

"A breathtaking work of immense proportion. Positively brilliant." — Entertainment Weekly

About the Playwright:

John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. Shanley has written some two dozen off-Broadway plays since the 1970s, but he is best known for Doubt, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award. He has also written extensively for TV and film, and his credits include the teleplay for Live from Baghdad and screenplays for Five Corners and Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for original screenplay.