Scene 4 reveals a number of interesting things about Sister Aloysius:

First, she is tending to plants that need to be protected from the upcoming winter, and which the gardener neglected to do.  She could ask Mr. McGinn to do it, or berate him for not having done it (and perhaps she does, in a scene we never see), but instead, Shanley shows us her doing the caretaking herself.

Yes, it’s fabulous business from the actor’s point of view, but it’s more than that.  Playwrights don’t make arbitrary choices in these matters.  Sister Aloysius’ caring for things that really need caring for is something Shanley wants us to see.

Scene 4 also reveals that Sister Aloysius was once married.  She says little about her husband in the play, other than that he died in WW II.  We are left to surmise the details, but there seems to be a connection between his death and her decision to enter the convent.  It is up to you, as the actor, to decide what that connection is – and unlike the matter of whether or not Jorgy and Bea in Other People’s Money had an affair or didn’t or are living together or not – I think this connection is critical to knowing who Sister Aloysius is and why she acts as she does.  But given so few hints, you probably won’t know the answer until deep into rehearsals.

Shanley also notes in his stage directions in this scene that “Sister Aloysius smiles for the first time.”  Now, I know I’m very fond of ignoring stage directions, but this is one I would have to think long and hard about before tossing it out.  It is very specific and speaks to Sister Aloysius’ general behavior and attitude.  More importantly, it serves the reason Shanley wrote the play to begin with:  to explore the nature of doubt.  In Scene 2, we meet a nun who isn’t particularly likable, who seems judgmental and unfeeling.  In Scene 4, we’re seeing her other side, and it puts us off-balance, which is precisely where Shanley wants us to be.

Still, she’s not yet a sympathetic character – until she starts talking about the relationship between the women and men religious in the Catholic Church as well as her understanding of the people in the parish and why Donald Muller will be hit by some classmate.  All right, she doesn’t suddenly become sympathetic, but she becomes a little more human.  When she explains to Sister James the difficulty of proving what is a hunch on both their parts, the audience starts to move into a place of uncertainty about the main plot line of the play, a move aided by the fact that Sister James has identified precisely what Sister Aloysius suspects, without clear direction from Sister Aloysius.

Has Sister Aloysius subtly manipulated Sister James into suspecting Father Flynn of child abuse?  Perhaps, but only perhaps.  There is inadequate proof in either direction, which is precisely what Shanley wants.  Doubt is, after all, doubt, not certainty.  That means giving the audience the ability to understand a little about what makes the characters tick and why they all perceive the same situation differently, without giving clear evidence as to what actually happened.

Kind of like life.

In my last post on this play, I’ll talk about Father Flynn and how to decide (as an actor) his innocence or guilt.

In Scene 2, we have the contrast of the older, stern Sr. Aloysius and the younger, enthusiastic Sr. James.  It’s easy to like Sr. James and to frown upon Sr. Aloysius, who seems to be vetoing anything happy.  But let’s look again.

Sr. Aloysius is the principal of the school and has worked there for many years.  Sr. James is a new teacher.  We can fairly say, I think, that as a new teacher, she undoubtedly has things to learn.  Sr. Aloysius is taking the time, in this scene, to mentor her.  Her approach may seem a bit severe at times, but let’s assume that underneath the gruffness is a sincere desire to help Sr. James be a better teacher, so that the children may be better served.

If you disagree with Sr. Aloysius, what you are disagreeing with is what it means “to be a better teacher”, or “what will benefit the children”.  Those are things about which reasonable people can disagree.  But you need to understand how Sr. Aloysius defines these things and, more importantly, why.  What in her background has led her to believe these things?  Has she tried other ways and seen them fail?

What are the things that matter to Sr. Aloysius?  Let’s look at some of her lines:

“Much can be accomplished in sixty minutes.”

“Always the easy way out these days.  What does that teach?  An easy choice today can have its consequence tomorrow.”

“Penmanship is dying all across the country.”

“You favor History and risk swaying the children to value it over their other subjects.  I think this is a mistake.”

“I do not say this to aggrandize myself, but to illustrate the importance of paying attention.”

“What good’s a gift if it’s left in the box?”

“The best teachers do not perform, they cause the students to perform.”

“Good teachers are never content.”

“It is a society which requires constant educational, spiritual, and human vigilance.”

“God gave you a brain and a heart.  The heart is warm, but your wits must be cold.”

“They’re children.  They can talk to each other.  It’s more important they have a fierce moral guardian.  You stand at the door, Sister.  You are the gatekeeper.  If you are vigilant, they will not need to be.”

“I’m sorry I’m not more forthright, but I must be careful not to create something by saying it.”

Take these lines out of the dialogue and forget that Sr. Aloysius is the one saying them.  These are all lines that you can probably either agree with or else understand the thinking behind them.  You may think that an adult ought to be more than a fierce moral guardian to a child, but you can probably get on board with Sr. Aloysius’ view that adults should protect children from anything immoral.

Despite all of the things Sr. Aloysius says that we don’t care for, the play is sprinkled with lines that we can agree with, that show her to be a bit more human than we thought when we first read the play.

The interesting question about Sr. Aloysius is that she is absolutely well-meaning and in some ways absolutely right.  Yet she takes it to an edge that we find unpalatable – she is an extremist in what she believes.  Why?  How has she arrived at this point?  What in her history has brought her to such a rigid, black and white position?

Well, that’s the journey you go on in rehearsal.  Just remember that she, too, has a heart, and that her heart is warm as well.  She knows William London is on a bad path and that she can’t do much to alter it, and it pains her.  She worries that someone will hit Donald Muller because he is black, and that Linda Conte will have sex before she turns 14.  And while she asks Sr. James to help Sr. Veronica because the school can’t afford to lose a teacher, I suspect that she is also worried about Sr. Veronica’s physical well-being as well as her happiness.  Who wants to be shunted away to the old nun’s home?

So let’s take the idea that Sr. Aloysius is not an unredeemable person, but someone who sees her mission as protecting the young children in her care from all harm.

When we first meet her, in Scene 2, it is clear that she is a woman of strong and firm opinions on matters like teaching methods.  You may not agree with those methods, but you need to give thought to why they matter to her.  Why should a teacher showing enthusiasm for a subject be a bad thing for kids to experience?  Why should knowledge be delivered as bitter medicine?  What benefit is derived by this approach?  Because in Sr. Aloysius’ eyes, there is a benefit.  It’s not an arbitrary choice on her part, and it’s not because she’s generally mean.  She sincerely thinks this is best for the kids.

Her advice to Sr. James sounds like severe criticism, but from Sr. Aloysius’ point of view, she is simply trying to help her to be a better teacher.  Sr. Aloysius is an ISTJ in Myers-Briggs’ terminology – she is businesslike and fond of order and tradition.  Part of the attraction of the Catholic Church is that if you want rules and black and white, you can find it there (you can also find the opposite there, even in the 1960s, but if you are attracted by rules, you can certainly find them.)

So for Sr. Aloysius, there is comfort and security in regulations.  If she fears uncertainty – doubt – then her desperate clinging to her set of rules helps quell her fears.

What’s the number one diamond line for Sr. Aloysius?  The final line of the play:  “I have doubts!  I have such doubts!”

So we have a nun who means well and wants to do the best job she can as principal (which means protecting her charges to the utmost), but is scared to death of the grey area and enforces the “Rule of Law” at her school both to protect her charges and to protect herself from the terrifying unknown.

Count both the adjectives and the verbs in that last paragraph.  Notice how I haven’t mentioned words like severe, heartless, unfeeling, mean-spirited, vindictive, vengeful, harsh, etc.?  Instead, I’ve given you motivations that you can use to drive what you do.

The playwright has written lines that have all the severity and mean-spiritedness necessary.  You don’t have to work to add any of that negative emotion to the performance.  The words will take care of that.  Your job, actually, is to do the opposite – to temper the strong language of the play with an emotional life that makes sense and creates a three-dimensional human being instead of a stereotype.

But let’s go back to the script of Scene 2.  Sr. Aloysius calls art class a waste of time.  Play the emotion (“she’s disparaging the arts”) and you play into the stereotype.  But if you stop and think about how someone could justifiably consider the arts a waste of time (what would you replace them with, and what benefit would the students derive from the replacement?), you take just a little bit of negative energy out of that line.

William London, the unruly child in Sr. James’ class, appears to be Sr. Aloysius’ favorite whipping boy, and she seems to be unreasonable, at least at first.  But read page 15 again.  What if Sr. Aloysius’ assessment of William’s life is absolutely spot on?  Forget how she says it, just look at the facts.  Does she become just a little bit more understandable?

More next time . . .

A local theater is doing a production of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Doubt.  The audition notice described Sr. Aloysius, the older nun determined to rid her school of the priest she is convinced has molested a young boy (and played on Broadway by Cherry Jones and in the film by Meryl Streep) as an

Old School elementary principal, stern, suspicious and cynical.  She shows no weakness and discourages any and all signs of weakness.  Her nature is excessive. She is unsympathetic and rules with an iron fist, adults and students alike.  She strongly dislikes Father Flynn’s sense of compassion and his compassionate demeanor.  Think cold, heartless and 100% strong willed and mean spirited.  Her anger and guilt-inducing suspicious nature, drives her passion.

Pretty extreme description, no?  “No weakness”, “any and all signs”, “excessive”, “iron fist”, “cold” “heartless”, “100% strong willed and mean spirited”.  Not a lot of room in there for playing the opposites, which I hope you now understand, if you’ve read the rest of the blog, helps to create a nuanced, interesting, unpredictable, believable character.

As it turns out, the director attended parochial school during the 60s and 70s until graduating from high school, and the description he provided reflects his own experience with at least some of the nuns he encountered.  Which is Lesson Number One:

Be careful about bringing your own baggage to the role.  Be sure it is applicable.

I’ve heard actors say things like, “Well, I would never do that, so I don’t find it believable!”  (Yes, but your character does, so you need to wrap your head around that.)  About La Marquise de Merteuil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses:  “I just can’t like her, she’s evil.”  (If you’re going to play her, you better understand her pain and what drives her to do terrible things, and not just see “evil”.)

The play isn’t about you; it’s about your character.  Separate your personal beliefs and experiences from what is happening to your character.  Use your own experiences if they are aligned with the character, but be careful to not assume that some correlation implies complete correlation.

If you perceive your character in the way this director sees Sr. Aloysius – if you can step back and recognize that you are using some weighty, definitive, and extreme language to describe her – it’s a very big indication that you’ve got some personal issues that are clouding your judgment about the character.  You need to sort out what those are and open yourself to the possibility that your character isn’t a mirror image of whomever it was who harmed you in the past.  (Similarly, if you paint your character with rose-colored glasses, you need to look for some flaws and accept that they do exist.)

But let’s say you’ve never met a nun in your life nor had any cruel teachers, and yet your reaction to Sr. Aloysius is not unlike the director’s response.  What do you do?  How do you go about playing characters with no redeeming qualities?

Stay tuned . . .

Diamond lines are lines that come with baggage.  They reveal a character’s history, something that has shaped who they are.  They ask you to go on an archeological dig.

The fact that the playwright throws them into the script tells you that they are critical to understanding the character and what she does in this play.  If she was the homecoming queen and the playwright doesn’t mention it, then being the queen wasn’t a defining moment for her or, at least, its ramifications (how she felt about it, how others reacted to it) don’t impact what happens to her in this play.

However, if the playwright does let this fact drop, it means it matters.  Was it a defining moment for her?  Is it is past glory that she clings to or one she wants to shed?  Has it affected how the men in her life view her, and is that a good thing or a problem for her?  How strong is her sense of self?  Does she need public approbation to feel good about herself?

Diamond lines usually jump out at me, but I also comb through the script to look for them.  Sometimes they are subtle, and you may not realize until halfway through rehearsals that there is really more buried in that line than you gave it credit for.  This is normal, but think what an advantage you have if you recognize what the line has to offer earlier in rehearsals!  Objectively looking at lines to see what they might mean is a way of finding them early.

So once you find your diamonds, what do you do with them?

Let’s start with what you SHOULDN’T do:  “Decide” they mean X, and then play X.

For example, let’s take Bea’s line about apologizing to no one.  You could take that to mean that she doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks about anything she does and play that, but it’s a bit simplistic.  For instance, it assumes that she behaves that way in all situations, and that’s unlikely.  She’s too likable a character for that to be true.

That approach also may assume she’s a little “in your face” about what she does:  “Take me as I am or don’t take me, I’m not changing for anyone”.  This, too, might have some validity, but it’s an extreme position, and while I believe in amping up your stakes by going as far as you can with something, that’s a very different thing than defining your characters by taking their personality traits to extremes.  People are very complicated beings, full of contradictions.

So one place to start is by taking what it seems to say about Bea – that she doesn’t apologize – and imagine circumstances under which she would.  What makes her feel bad?  How does she feel about other people (because we apologize to people we care about and not often to those who drive us nuts)?

Then, let’s put the line in context.  She is speaking very specifically about her relationship with Jorgy.  This line tells me that she knows it’s an unorthodox relationship, she knows what a stir it caused in town, and she has lived with that stir for most of her life without once responding to questions or misconceptions or insults that sprang up as a result.

That’s a very difficult thing to do.  It tells me that Bea is made of steel.  (But again – where are the weak points in her steely frame?)  It also tells me something about how she feels about Jorgy.  You only can keep silent in the face of personal attack if you know, with every fiber of your being, that you are doing the absolutely right thing.  Bea loves Jorgy so deeply that she is willing to sacrifice everything for it.

Did she make the right choice in doing this?  Not for you, as the actor, to say.  Only for you to examine the reason for the choice and the impact of that choice.  What did she sacrifice in order to be with Jorgy on such unusual terms?  How did it impact her marriage?  Her relationship with her daughter?  With friends?  Co-workers?

Mostly what I do with diamond lines is try to internalize what they really mean, and not necessarily in a way that I can communicate verbally to you.  It’s a matter of understanding how they make me feel.  If Bea’s choice would not have been mine, they I have to spend considerable time getting to a real place of understanding why she made that choice.

What would I be willing to stand for over time without budging an inch?  How much of a conscious choice was this and how much was simply who Bea is?  Were there moments when she almost responded to someone and didn’t, held back at the last minute?  What did that feel like?  If Bea had chosen to respond, what would she have said?  Would what she would have said changed over the years, as she matured?  After Jorgy’s wife died?  After her own husband died?

You need to simply sit with diamond lines and let them work their magic on you.  They always have layers to them.  How much of what drives them is genetic, and how much environmental?

Revisit diamond lines over and over again.  In the shower.  While driving.  Waiting in the checkout line.  Keep pushing deeper into them, both intellectually and emotionally.  Sift through your character’s history and heart, brushing away the dirt that covers your diamond.  Discover all of the diamond’s facets, not just what first meets the eye.

To read Script Analysis:  Diamond Lines, Part 1, go here.