Roles parallel real life for two area actresses

It’s the area premiere of the Tony-winning play.

BY GUY D’ASTOLFO

VINDICATOR ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — It’s a case of life imitating art for two of the cast members in the Oakland Center for the Arts’ production of “Doubt.” Or maybe it’s art imitating life.

One thing is certain: “Doubt” has earned a mountain of acclaim as a dramatic work that keeps audience members talking long after it’s over. The play garnered the Tony Award for Best Play in 2005, while playwright Patrick Shanley won a Pulitzer Prize for it the same year.

The Mahoning Valley premiere of “Doubt” opens Friday at the Oakland, under the direction of Mike Hinge.

The play is set in St. Nicholas Church School in The Bronx in 1964. It has a cast of four, including Father Flynn, played by regional theater mainstay James McClellan, and Sister Aloysius Beauvier, played by Joanne Carney Smith.

Sister Aloysius, the school principal, confronts Father Flynn after she begins to suspect him of having an inappropriate relationship with a student. Father Flynn denies the charge.

The other two cast members are April Sauline, who plays Sister James, a new teacher at the school; and Carla Gipson, who plays Mrs. Muller, the mother of the student.

For Smith and Sauline, the play has many parallels to their real life.

Smith is the assistant principal of Cardinal Mooney High School.

Sauline is starting this semester as a teacher at a school with the same name as the one in the play: St. Nicholas in Struthers.

But that's not the end of the coincidences. “April [Sauline] was one of my students at Mooney,” said Smith. “I directed her in plays there, and also in ‘Over the Tavern’ at the Oakland. At the same time that she was auditioning for ‘Doubt,’ April got hired as a teacher and at a school with the same name.

“It was meant to be,” she said.

Hinge, the director, agreed that the coincidences were a good sign. “We look to the muses for encouragement,” he said with a laugh. He never saw “Doubt” on Broadway. “I’m glad I never saw it. It would bias me in how I direct it,” he said. Hinge, an English teacher at Chaney High School, has directed a number of Oakland productions, including “Death of a Salesman,” “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “Bent.”

Smith is also a frequent director at the Oakland. Her credits include “Baby,” “Greater Tuna,” “Foreigner,” “Over the Tavern” and “Smoke on the Mountain.” She also directs student plays at Mooney.

When Smith first saw “Doubt” on Broadway a few years ago, she marveled at the work done by actress Cherry Jones, who played Sister Aloysius. “I thought, ‘That is a role I’d love to do’ ... I was especially interested in it, being a Catholic school administrator and being around nuns my whole life,” said Smith.

“Doubt” does not mock or belittle the clergy, nor does it attempt to play off the sensationalism of the priest sex-abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic Church several years ago.

“It is not a slam at the priesthood or nuns,” she said. “Obviously, if it was, I wouldn’t be doing it, being an administrator at a Catholic school, and with my beliefs.

“The play is so much bigger than just being about a priest who may have behaved inappropriately. It’s about the doubt that you see in the characters.”

Smith said Sister Aloysius is not a caricature, but instead is a genuine depiction of a nun in 1964. “She is confident and runs the school with an iron hand, no nonsense,” she said.

What elevates “Doubt” and makes it so memorable is the way it makes audience members feel so certain of Father Flynn’s guilt, only to change their minds later. “I have never experienced a play where my opinion changed so many times,” said Smith. “When I walked out [after seeing ‘Doubt’], I wasn’t certain about anything. And the more you discuss it with the other people who saw it, the more opinions you hear that you never considered.

“John Shanley [the playwright] did a wonderful job of making you feel certain, only to later have doubt.”