Interview: John Patrick Shanley, playwright

Published on Friday 21 May 2010 20:45

John Patrick Shanley has had first-hand experience of the equivocation his acclaimed play explores, says John Patrick Shanley has had first-hand experience of the equivocation his acclaimed play explores, says Mark Fisher

THE teenage John Patrick Shanley went through a tough time in the early 1960s. Emotionally disturbed, he was thrown out of various schools in New York before finding himself, by a "fluke of fate", in Thomas Moore prep school in New Hampshire. "I'd never been out of the Bronx and most of these kids were from wealthy homes," says the playwright, whose film Doubt, starring Meryl Streep, was nominated for five Oscars in 2008. "I was very out of my depth. This one teacher took me in, befriended me, championed me, educated me, was an amazing English teacher and encouraged my writing

Like many inspirational teachers, he made a life-changing impression on Shanley. Many writers will tell you a similar story. But this time there was a downside. "He was a predator," says Shanley matter-of-factly. "He never preyed on me, but he was a predator and I found out years later for certain that it was true."

If Shanley had suspicions at the time, it was something he opted to overlook. "When you have needs, you choose not to see certain things," he says. "That was very much the case with me as a teenager. I did not want to believe that and so I didn't. But I saw all the evidence and it was all stacked up in my head just waiting to be collated, which it was, years later."

He was fortunate not to have been abused himself, but knows how close a call it was. Today, he looks in dismay at the reaction of the Catholic church's hierarchy to the allegations being made against paedophile priests. "I noticed the Pope in Fatima was denouncing abortions and gay marriage. I thought, 'What moral authority are you exercising? Isn't it time to shut up for a while?' You can't be all humble and 'we have to look to ourselves' and the next day say, 'But I have a lot of judgments to make.' The moral authority of the Church at this time is nil and the humility is completely lacking."

These are the opinions of Shanley, the man. Ask Shanley, the playwright, however, and you get a different set of answers. Glasgow's Theatre Jezebel is about to present the Scottish premiere of Doubt: A Parable, the play on which the film is based. Although it draws directly on the author's childhood experiences, it is not a straightforward paedophile drama. Rather, as the title suggests, it is a play about uncertainty.

"I see the world based on the assumption that you can never know anything, not for certain," he says. "Yet you want to be a functioning human being, so you have to make assumptions in order to go on with your life. How do you do that?"

Shanley, the playwright, deliberately leaves you guessing. Is the authoritarian Sister Aloysius right to confront the genial Father Flynn with accusations of improper behaviour towards a pupil? Or is Flynn, as he says, merely a compassionate man concerned for the boy's welfare? Both possibilities are plausible. With actors of the charisma of Alison Peebles and Keith Fleming taking on the roles at Glasgow's Tron, it will be hard to know whose side to take.

"I designed Doubt so that the last act takes place after it's over, when you go out and talk about it," says Shanley. "There are things you were absolutely certain everybody in the audience perceived, but you're not right; they're actually quite split and see very different plays, very different stories."

Far from being an anti-Catholic rant, the play portrays the nuns in a positive light, not least the character of Sister James. A nave, conscientious and intelligent teacher, she is as uncomfortable with the fervour of Sister Aloysius as she is uncertain about Father Flynn. Shanley based the part on one of his own teachers – Sister Margaret McEntee – whom he tracked down to advise on the film.

"I'm very sympathetic to the nuns," he says. "These are social activists who go out and take care of old people, children, the sick and the dying. It's very difficult to judge people who have devoted their life to helping society."

All the same, it is no coincidence that a story about doubt should be set in an institution governed by faith. Shanley describes himself as spiritual but not religious, a position he came to when, as an adolescent, he found it hard to reconcile the absolutism of Catholicism with the ambiguity of lived experience.

"When I went to my Catholic school in the Bronx everybody was very confident about what was right and wrong. It was the early 1960s and, within a couple of years, these nuns who to us were eternal verities, were going to be out of their habits and called by their real names. The whole world was going to change.

"The view of the world you get from the Catechism, which is that any moral question you have can be answered, is very comforting to a child. Until puberty, religion served me very well. I did not have a traumatic experience, but it was the certainty coming up against my consciousness that made me ask, 'What do I do with all these other parts of myself that their world does not include?'"

The clash between certainty and doubt brings us back to his predatory English teacher. "Here's the equation: one of the most helpful people in my life was also a terrible villain for another person standing right next to me. That's pretty much what Doubt is about. I'm a passionate person and I want to violently come down on the bad people – I just don't know who they are."

&#149 Doubt: A Parable is at the Tron, Glasgow, 1-5 June.