The performances will begin at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Friday and Saturday, January 26-28, and at 3 p.m. on Sunday, January 29, all inside BC’s Harman Chapel Auditorium. Admission for each performance will be $10 for adults and $5 for students and senior citizens. Members of the BC family will be admitted for free.
Written in 2005 and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony award and a Drama Desk award, Doubt is set in St. Nicholas Middle School in the Bronx in 1964. The Sisters of Charity are the teachers and school administrators. The principal is the iron-willed Sister Aloysius Beauvier. She becomes convinced that the parish priest Father Brendan Flynn is a sexual predator, pursuing the adolescent boys of St. Nicholas and is determined to drive him out of the school.
But, Sister Beauvier’s suspicions are based on no tangible evidence and the struggle between the priest and nun threaten to tear the school and the parish apart. The resulting story becomes a “courtroom drama” not set in a courtroom as the two principal characters proceed to try to prove the righteousness of their respective cases. Due to the sensitivity of the subject matter of this play, it is not recommended for children.
The Bluefield College Theatre presentation of Doubt is an alumni showcase production featuring BC Theatre graduates and faculty. Theatre professor Rebecca McCoy-Reese plays the role of Sister Beauvier. Other previous BC Theatre roles by McCoy-Reese include Amanda in The Glass Menagerie and Golde in Fiddler on the Roof. Theatre alumnus Bobby Hall plays Father Flynn. Hall’s previous roles include Huckleberry Finn in Big River, Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, and Tom in Glass Menagerie. Sister James, the principal’s protégé, is played by theatre alumna Jennifer Bohannan, who has been seen as the White Witch in Chronicles of Narnia and Elvira in Blithe Spirit. Mrs. Miller, the mother of a St. Nicholas student, is played by Amanda Buchanan, who recently appeared in the 4 Pals production of The Eleventh Hour. Doubt is directed by Bluefield College Theatre professor and artistic director Charles M. Reese.
“This is one of the most intense plays we have ever staged at BC,” said Reese. “It deals not only with the controversy of sexual predation in the church, but it also looks at what happens when opposing forces become so entrenched in their beliefs — and suspicions — that they cease to communicate.”
For more information about this or other spring ’17 Bluefield College plays, contact the BC Theatre Department by email at [email protected] or by phone at 276-326-4244 or 276-326-4213.