Late Nite Catechism hits 15th year in Chicago!

In 2007, Late Nite Catechism celebrated the start of its 15th year,

now one of the longest running comedies in the city's theater history.

Special 10th Anniversary Feature about Late Nite Catechism!

January 30, 2002

Your spine straightens, swear words die unspoken, life is suddenly a serious proposition. When the nun appears in front of the room, Catholic and plenty of non-Catholics too, look anxiously heavenward for lightning bolts aimed at once and future sinners.

Even though "Late Nite Catechism" is just a play, and that’s simply a local actress in a nun’s habit, often, when she appears on stage, "there’s a gasp from the audience. It’s a visceral reaction," says Vicki Quade, who created the interactive comedy show with Maripat Donovan 10 years ago. Donovan is now performing in the Los Angeles production of the show. The two partners have a production company, Quade/Donovan Entertainment, and they are the producers of their own show in both Chicago and Los Angeles. They also have national producers who book the show in other cities.

Late Nite Catechism began when Donovan came to Quade (pronounced "KWA-dee"), a journalist and editor, for help developing a play based on the lives of the saints. Both women had grown up attending Catholic schools on the South Side, and their collaboration soon evolved into the play onstage today. Before she started school at age 6, Quade had believed nuns in a category somewhere just below the angels. "I didn’t think nuns were really human beings," she says. "Only as I got older, did I realize they were real people."

Late Nite Catechism taps into such childishly skewed notions. "I like to call it a memory play. It takes you back to third grade. Even if you didn’t have nuns as teachers, you knew about nuns. And you had a strong teacher at least once. So the play works for a lot of people on a lot of levels," says Quade.

Cynthia Desmond, who alternates with five others in the role of Sister, says the show’s comedy is universal because everyone was a scared kid once. "You don’t have to be Catholic to get the humor," she says. "I get Jews in the audience, Methodists, Baptists, a lot of Lutherans. Everyone’s heard nun stories."

But the show has a serious side too. "It reflects a sense of spirituality people want to get back to. It takes you back to a simpler time, when you knew exactly what was expected of you, and who was expecting it. People suspect that every nun has a direct line to God," says Desmond.

Even today’s kids, who may never seen a nun in the traditional black robes, are awestricken when Sister appears. "I think they think they’re looking at some kind of Darth Vader. You just don’t mess around with someone who dresses like that," says Mary McHale, who’s played Sister here for four years.

Like the theology it’s named for, Late Nite Catechism is still drawing people. This is its 10^th Chicago season; there are productions running from coast to coast; it’s been done in Canada, Australia, Ireland and England. A Paris production is set for the fall.

"It was originally scheduled to run six weeks, and I was ready to be happy if it lasted for three," recalls Quade.

But the show has lasted. Quade explains that it stays fresh because of new material. "Over the years, we took all the things that could possibly happen in our catechism class, and developed possible responses. The actors can choose whatever they want to use, so every show is different."

Beyond their value as entertainment, performances also benefit the religious women who inspired Quade and Donovan. After every show, all over the country, the actress-nuns ask for donations to help support retired nuns. In the last five years, more than $600,000 has gone to aid nuns of various orders around the country.

Most people are unaware of the plight of these religious women. Quade and Donovan discovered their poverty while visiting convents to gather information for their script. They realized that the nuns’ resources were drastically depleted. "Nuns are resourceful, but people don’t realize that most of them get little, if any, Social Security. They don’t get any funding from the archdiocese either," says Quade.

Their past earnings never added up to much in saving either. "We didn’t make a lot of money, but it wasn’t our aim to make a lot of money, " says Sister Jane Smith, prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago, who run St. Scholastica High School in Rogers Park.

It’s a real tragedy," says Desmond, who has aunts who are nuns, and who, like McHale, Quade and Donovan, was educated by nuns. "These women gave everything to the kids and their work. Now they have nothing. In the past, the younger nuns of an order worked, and their income supported the older, retired nuns. But now they’re a dying breed. You don’t see many young nuns today. So a highlight every evening for me is finding out how much we’ve collected. And people are happy to donate."

"Their goodness to us has been wonderful," says Sister Smith. She explains that donations from Late Nite Catechism have helped support aged sisters. Currently, donations from the show are being used to aid one sister each month who is in the order’s infirmary, which costs about $1,900 a month.

Sister Smith, a nun since 1952, is also happy with the way Late Nite Catechism depicts nuns. "I think the show is fun. If there’s anything I hate, it’s the image of the old-fashioned, strict sister," she says.

Sister Denise Seymour, director of development for the Sister of St. Joseph, another order that has benefited from the Late Nite Catechism donations, also enjoys the show. She believes it conveys the true feeling teaching nuns have for their students. Before taking her current position, Sister Seymour served as a school principle for 27 years and taught for 17 years before that. "I just loved teaching. The children are so alive, how could anyone not love it?" she says.

As for the humor, Sister Seymour finds it exaggerated, but not offensive. "They’re just putting on a show, and everyone realizes it. The older sisters, especially, laugh a lot. And of course, we nuns can really give it to the actresses. We really know how to get Sister’s goat."

Desmond enjoys having nuns in her Catechism classes. "Nowadays, they don’t always wear habits. But they don’t realize how easy it is to pick them out in the audience. They love to push our buttons, and they don’t say they’re nuns. They think they’re getting away with something. But they still look like nuns, and when I out them, the audience loves it," she days.

Quade says a lot of Catholics still feel a strong affection for the nuns who taught them. "A nun was very much a mother figure, a nurturing woman, a strong woman. That’s why we created a real nun, not a singing, dancing caricature," she says.

Quade and Donovan also created the character as a generic nun. She doesn’t have a name other than "Sister," and the habit she wears, though adapted from Benedictine robes, isn’t form any particular order, "Our ‘Sister’ is strong, definitely a feminist. She has an aura of authority," says Quade.

Because Late Nite Catechism’s Sister is a teaching nun, she’s easy to portray. "The more the audience acts like students, the more you act like a teacher," says McHale. "That’s why the show works. It’s simple. Sister is the teacher, and the audience is a class that needs to learn and be disciplined. We crave discipline because we think it will make us better people, and it will."

And creating better people was the point of every nun’s life, Desmond believes. "Nuns were the originators of ‘tough love.’ They always wanted you to so better. They were sweet, kindly women, but like Sister, they had two sides. When you stepped out of line, you stepped on the tail of a tiger," she says.

So Desmond has honed her roar. "If a cell phones rings in catechism class," she says, "I say ‘That better be God calling.’ Then I confiscate the phone, and sometimes even lecture whoever is on the other end."

McHale says that occasionally, audience members complain of having been hit by nuns. But she believes such incidents were unusual, and were a reflection of the times – the late 1950s and 1960s. She attended Catholic schools in the 1960s, but never had a nun hit her. "Some kids got hit at home, too, then. I never even heard a nun yell at a kid."

Though as a parent, McHale does not believe in corporal punishment, in character as Sister, she says, "I always defend discipline. So I ask these people, ‘Did it ever occur to you that the nun was trying to improve you? Here you are, still coming back to what that nun was trying to tell you, so maybe it was important. If that sister hadn’t hit you, would you be as good a person today as you?’"

Most Catholic school students have grown up to appreciate their nuns’ efforts, judging by the contributions Late Nite Catechism has received. The nuns "gave us a lot of good information about living," says McHale. "They were very good at what they did – teaching and discipline. They knew that you have to have someone to answer to, even if it’s only yourself."