This replication of an adult class in Catholic doctrine was already an exercise in nostalgia when it premiered at Live Bait in 1993. Since then, Chicago theatergoers have looked to twenty actresses in a dozen theaters for insights into the guidance of three Popes, four presidents and three mayors — an experience shared with audiences of over four hundred cities, in six countries on four continents. Never before, however, has our Teaching Sister enjoyed as spacious a roomful of ecclesiastical tchotchkes as that in the upstairs studio at Lincoln Park's Greenhouse where class is once more in session.
Playgoers averse to proselytizing needn't anticipate pressure, however, since Sister's lesson plan quickly segues from prepping for Sunday Mass to Catholicism in America as a cultural phenomenon: the radical changes engendered in 1959 by Vatican II, for example, or mythic incarnations of Saints embraced by secular communities (particularly the ever-popular Saint Patrick, who was not Irish), or the curious practice of burying statues of Saint Joseph to ensure the sale of a house. We also bear witness to the predicament of aging clergy in 2021, who are denied access to government programs such as Medicare, but whose waning numbers make for a shortage of convent-based caregivers. (Receipts from this play's performances go toward retirement funds for an array of orders.)
Donning the "40 pounds of gabardine" to welcome inquisitive pupils back this fall is Rose Guccione, an opera singer by trade, whose instruction in response to queries from the "students"—ranging from pop-singer Madonna's Marianistic posturing to the special powers invested in the brown scapular displayed on the stage next to the inevitable bust of John F. Kennedy and picture of Pope Francis—encompasses not only a few bars of Bel Canto warbling, but a "God the Father" who speaks with a Sicilian accent. Hey, this is an ecumenical congregation where everybody is welcome!
