- published: 29 Mar 2013
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Doubt, A Parable is a 2004 play by John Patrick Shanley. Originally staged off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club on November 23, 2004, the production transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in March 2005 and closed on July 2, 2006 after 525 performances and 25 previews. The play won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. The play was turned into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn and Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius.
The play is set in the fictional St. Nicholas Church School, in the Bronx, during the fall of 1964. It opens with a sermon by Father Flynn, a beloved and progressive parish priest, addressing the importance of uncertainty ("Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty," he says). The school's principal, Sister Aloysius, a rigidly conservative nun vowed to the order of the Sisters of Charity, insists upon constant vigilance. During a meeting with a younger nun, Sister James, it becomes clear that Aloysius harbors a deep mistrust toward her students, her fellow teachers, and society in general. Naïve and impressionable, James is easily upset by Aloysius’s severe manner and harsh criticism.
Doubt characterises a status in which the mind remains suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them Doubt on an emotional level is indecision between belief and disbelief. Doubt involves uncertainty, distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision. Doubt questions a notion of a perceived "reality", and may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for mistakes or faults or appropriateness. (compare paradox).
The concept of doubt as a suspense between two contradictory propositions covers a range of phenomena: on a level of the mind it involves reasoning, examination of facts and evidence and on an emotional level believing and disbelief.
In premodern theology doubt was "the voice of an uncertain conscience" and important to realize, because when in doubt "the safer way is not to act at all".
Doubt sometimes tends to call on reason. Doubt may encourage people to hesitate before acting, and/or to apply more rigorous methods. Doubt may have particular importance as leading towards disbelief or non-acceptance.
Play may refer to:
Doubt: A Parable
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