Doubt

I've been working on Doubt and the preface to play written at the beginning of the script is something I find so interesting that I'm going to put it as my blog for today. I spend a great deal of time dealing with income and expenses, marketing plays, writing grants and promoting the theatre. But many times the real joy of my job is to work with the ideas and themes in a play. How that impacts us on a personal level. What questions it forces me personally to confront and how I can bring those questions to our community in a way that allows us as a community to explore these questions in a deeper way.

Here is an excerpt from the Preface to play Doubt written in the front of the script by playwright John Patrick Shanley.

What's under a play? What holds it up? You might as well ask what's under me? On what am I built? There's something silent under every person and under every play. There is something unsaid under any given society as well.

There's a symptom apparent in America right now. It's evident in political talk shows, in entertainment coverage, in artistic criticism of every kind, in religious discussion. we are living in a courtroom culture. We were living in a celebrity culture, but that's dead. Now we're only interested in celebrities if they're in court. We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment, and of verdict. Discussion has given way to debate. communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere. Why? Maybe it's because deep down under the chatter we have come to a place where we know that we don't know...anything. But no body's willing to say that.

Let me ask you. Have you ever held a position in an argument past the point of comfort? Have you Have you ever defended a way of life you were on the verge of exhausting? Have you ever ever given service to a creed you no longer utterly believed? Have you ever told a girl you loved her and felt the faint nausea of eroding conviction? I have. That's an interesting moment. for a playwright, it's the beginning of an idea. I saw a piece of real estate on which I might build a play, a play that sat on something silent in my life and in my time. I started with the title: Doubt.

What is Doubt? Each of us is like a planet. There's the crust, which seems eternal. We are confident about who we are. If you ask, we can readily describe our current state. I know my answers to so many questions, as do you. What was your father like? Do you believe in God? Who's your best friend? What do you want? Your answers are your current topography, seemingly permanent, but deceptively so. Because under that face of easy response, there is another You. And this wordless Being moves just as the instant moves; it presses upward without explanation, fluid and wordless, until the resisting consciousness has no choice but to give way.

It is Doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he's on the verge of growth. The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake, like you've gone the wrong way and you're lost. but this is just emotion longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind. Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present.

The first rehearsal for Doubt is tonight.