BRATTLEBORO — When the Vermont Theatre Company set out to stage John Patrick Shanley's 2004 Pulitzer-Prize-winning play Doubt: A Parable, director Hallie Flower says, she “resisted a little bit.”
The play, set in a Catholic school in 1964, centers around a progressive parish priest and the school's principal, a mistrusting conservative nun.
As the VTC describes the play, “Father Flynn is a popular and progressive young priest who has come under the watchful eye of Principal Sister Aloysius. A vague incident with the school's first black student, involving the priest and witnessed by young Sister James, arouses suspicions about conduct and motive.”
“I just didn't want to do a play about sexual abuse in the church right now,” Flower says.
But she changed her mind when she saw the full range of the “territory it tackles within.”
The play, she says, is a larger parable, a “reaction to post-9/11 America,” a commentary on the grand statements and the certainties of the time, about issues and perceptions of right and wrong.
Shanley (writer of the films Moonstruck and Joe versus the Volcano and of the play Italian American Reconciliation) “wants the audience to be in a constant place of doubt,” Flower says.
The nonprofit theater company describes the play as “an exploration of the experience of doubt” that tackles some questions: “What damage is wrought by certainty? What strength do we find in not knowing? What change and growth is possible through the full discomfort of doubt?”
Those ambiguities intrigued Flower.
“The play carves a balanced story, where you don't know where you stand,” she says. “As a director, that's a big bag of chocolate. The challenge is exciting.”
Ensemble where 'everything clicks'
Flower says that the actors for this month's production are “particularly wired to work with this script.”
The play features Mark Bateman, Kelley Johnston, Keely Eastley, and Merrilyn Taylor.
Bateman, who had worked as an actor in New York City for 20 years before relocating to Vermont, returned to the stage in the one-man play Nocturne in Brattleboro in 2009.
Johnston has worked with Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Mass., as a cast member and as an educator in the troupe's school outreach program.
Taylor, who is new to the area, played Ruth in Misreadings, one of the pieces featured in Actors Theatre Playhouse's 2011 Ten Minute Play Festival.
Eastley, of Williamsville, who serves as a designated teacher at the Linklater Center for Voice and Language in New York City, lectures at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology Theater Arts, and as a vocal specialist for the New England Youth Theatre.
“I don't think local audiences have seen these actors much,” says Flower, who has studied with Eastley. “Once you start working with her, you don't want to stop,” Flower says. “When I had the opportunity to direct her, I jumped at it.”
“It's not just that these are all gifted actors,” she says. “They have the energy and compassion as human beings to create this balance with the characters. It's exciting to watch.”
As for Flower, who returned to the area a few years ago after an absence, she describes theater as “my field of study and my passion.”
“I try to direct something each year,” she says. “I don't do as much of it as I would like.”
“I am always grateful there are pockets of gifted people here doing what they love,” Flower says. “I'm having an experience where everything clicks, and that's magic to the ensemble. I feel really lucky.”