The Divine Sister

  • Sep 24 – Oct 3, 2015

  • Black Box Theatre
  • Sold out. Tickets for this event are no longer available.
By Charles Busch Directed by Kate Ingram

An outrageous comic homage to nearly every Hollywood film involving nuns St. Veronica’s indomitable Mother Superior is encountering plenty of hurdles to building a new school for her convent, but the biggest obstacle might be herself. “Cue the Hallelujah chorus! Charles Busch has put on a nun’s habit and is talking to God, from whom he has evidently received blessed counsel.” —The New York Times The Divine Sister is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. This play will be performed without intermission and contains profanity, adult content, and gunshots. Setting: April 1966, Pittsburgh

  • Sep 24 – Oct 3, 2015

  • Black Box Theatre
  • Sold out. Tickets for this event are no longer available.

A Note from the Director

Warning: This play just might offend you! Or shock you! But it will certainly make you laugh and think about nuns in a very different way.

Confession: Yes, I was brought up by a devout Irish Catholic father, and at one time (right around 1966, in fact!) I thought I was being called by God to become a nun.

Charles Busch’s The Divine Sister is a hilarious send-up of all of the many beloved archetypes of Holy Sisters, and he has chosen to set it in 1966. The 1960’s were a period of incredible change and upheaval. The Beatles, the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, the Vietnam War, hippies…

Pope John 23rd launched a religious revolution in 1962 with the changes he set forth in Vatican II: there hadn’t been an ecumenical council (an assembly of Roman Catholic religious leaders to address doctrine) in nearly 100 years. The goal was to modernize the Catholic church: the traditional Latin Mass would now be said in the native language, and laypeople were invited to take leadership roles in the Church. Catholic nuns and their established order and life-style faced enormous challenges.

Other related events in the ‘60s: recordings of the French “Singing Nun” actually topped the best-seller lists and sometimes beat out the Beatles! Rosemary’s Baby, the best-selling horror novel by Ira Levin (later an Oscar-winning film) is filled with Catholic imagery and dogma.

Of course, Charles Busch has included more recent allusions, with a few only slightly veiled hints of Dan Brown’s recent best-selling controversial novel “The DaVinci Code” which may have offended some Catholic sensibilities, but also captured the imagination of readers (and film-goers.)

The Name of the Rose is a modern novel by Umberto Eco, set in 1372; it is a medieval murder mystery set in a monastery and (spoiler alert) bases its premise on the fact that the Catholic Church was only preserving Aristotle’s ancient Greek writings on tragedy, but they were guarding and hiding everything Aristotle wrote about comedy.

I can’t help but wonder if this is one of Charles Busch’s favorite books (and later a film–watch it!) Because what is life without laughter? We must not take life so seriously that we cannot laugh at ourselves, and even allow ourselves to belly laugh at what we think is sacred. Enjoy!

—Kate Ingram, Director