Sweet relief

[Times photos: John Pendygraft] Colleen O’Neill portrays Sister, a Catholic school nun, in the one-woman audience-participation show Late Nite Catechism. O’Neill, 53, knows of what she spoofs: She went to Catholic school for 12 years.

By SHARON TUBBS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 14, 2002

Catholics feeling bruised by the church's sex abuse scandal find a lighthearted haven in Late Nite Catechism, a sendup of Catholic school complete with a (faux) nun.

TAMPA -- Colleen O'Neill irons part of her costume, makes it neat and crisp, takes off her jeans shirt, cotton pants and slip-on shoes. Then she slinks into thick black tights, a habit and a stocking cap to tame the wavy bob beneath her nun's hat. She trades her purple, cat-woman frame glasses for thin, prim rims, more befitting tonight's role.

The transformation takes less than an hour inside a narrow dressing room with many mirrors and dimming bulbs. A 53-year-old Manhattanite with a penchant for David Letterman becomes "Sister," the nun whose audience is her classroom in Late Nite Catechism.

In its third local tour, the show is among the most popular one-woman acts to play the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Late Nite premiered in 1993 in Chicago and opened off-Broadway in 1996. Today, some 20 actors play Sister in theaters nationwide.

Though not a Catholic show, per se, the comedy has special meaning for those who went to Catholic school back when nuns whacking knuckles with rulers was more than a stereotype. Each show is different because Sister involves the audience. She asks doctrinal questions that have answers they should have learned in school.

Catholics deem the confines of TBPAC's quaint Jaeb Theater a safe place to chuckle at their religious upbringing. It is one of few forums for lightheartedness in Catholicism these days as the church trudges through its worst scandal in recent years.

Stage manager Scott Belowsky sits outside O'Neill's dressing room with his hands cupped behind his head. "Thirty minutes," he says calmly, out of routine than necessity.

His job with Late Nite is relaxed. No makeup artist is necessary. Nuns don't indulge, so O'Neill doesn't, either. There's no costume changes; the habit and a pair of black laceup shoes suffice. No mad rush before show time.

O'Neill sips tea as a soft medley of Catholic hymns plays to set the mood: Hallelujah, Hal-le-luuuu-jah . . . .

It is 7:30, and a crowd murmurs. O'Neill strides down the hallway, through a door and into darkness. She stands still for 30 seconds to compose herself. Her eyes narrow, her lips purse. Sister steps onstage.

O’Neill irons part of her nun’s costume called the wimple.

"Okay, class," Sister says. "Simmer down! Simmer down!"

The theater quiets and people listen to the 6-foot-tall nun standing behind a desk. A blackboard, alphabet charts, math cards, posters and a clock are her backdrop.

Catholicism is not merely a religion; it's a way of life, she says, laying the foundation for her act. "It's cultural."

Sister tells the class her background, that she started teaching some years ago with a class of 52 children.

With a stocking cap taming her hair, O’Neill begins putting on her headgear.

"And every one of those children knew they were better than the kids in the public schools," she says.

The crowd cracks up.

Things have changed. In the "heyday," Sister says, tuition was about $12 a month. Parents nowadays spend thousands.

"And no more raffles," she says. "I tell you, if it wasn't nailed down, we raffled it."

Remember Easter duty?

Heads nod all over the theater. Sister offers a small packet of glow-in-the-dark rosary beads for anyone who can explain Easter duty.

A woman in the front stands. Her name is Libby. Sister, of course, asks her real name and is delighted to learn that it is Mary Elizabeth, a name that would make the saints proud.

Sister calls her Mary for the rest of the night but pauses slightly when she realizes that the eager pupil and her two friends are a bit unsteady on their feet -- perhaps the result of the drinks with little straws sitting on their table. Sister notes that they must have gotten some "milk" to settle their stomachs before the show.

Libby gives the wrong answer, and Sister moves on. Dorothy, whose confirmation name, Sister learns, was that of St. Therese of Lisieux, stands with the correct response: The duty involved confession and Holy Communion during Easter. Dorothy gets the rosary.

"No side-talking!" Sister says, chastising Libby, whose chatter and heckling are slightly disruptive. She gives Libby a glow-in-the-dark rosary and continues with the show.

"If you think about it, nuns are like gangs," Sister says. More than 600 orders of religious sisters are in the United States and Canada, each with a different mission, different traditions and different codes of dress, she says. "Two Sisters of St. Joseph can take out two Carmelites, no problem."

In the audience, Carol Santarsiero and Christine Sabia, both from Wesley Chapel, are giggling and nodding. They went to Catholic school and remember how it was a heathen no-no for a girl to tease. .

"That was years ago," Sabia says, "not today."

All you could see was a nun's eyes, nose and mouth, Santarsiero recalls. "We didn't even know they had hair."

A final check and Sister is ready to face her class.

O'Neill grew up in the culture she recreates onstage. She was raised Catholic, taught by the Holy Cross nuns in Alexandria, Va., for 12 years. She was the kid always in detention for talking, for fighting, for passing notes. She got hit with rulers for writing with her left hand, she said.

She remembers nuns with habits so long you couldn't see their shoes. They walked with such calm and poise, O'Neill figured they must have been gliding on skates.

One nun was her favorite: Sister Mary Baptist. The nun tried to be discreet about it, but O'Neill says she could tell Sister Mary Baptist liked her, too.

"She was very tall. She was very gaunt. And she rarely smiled," O'Neill says. "But when she did smile, it felt like the sun was let out."

O'Neill says she gained a lot in Catholic school, including an appreciation for literature. "I got a wonderful education."

She went to the College of Sante Fe in New Mexico and studied theater for about a year. But O'Neill never saw much sense in biology and math classes when all she wanted to do was act. She performed in regional theaters in Sante Fe for a while before moving back to the East Coast in 1975. She has been acting in clubs, shows and independent films since.

Many of her roles have lacked the piety of Sister. She created the character Dr. Julia Wonder, a blond bombshell psychic from Vegas, and has performed as Wonder on Maury Povich's show and at Lincoln Center in New York. She played a grieving "white-trash" mother in Kill Me Tomorrow and an overly protective mother in a parody of Italian sexploitation films.

Just before going onstage, Belowsky asks if O'Neill remembers the Pyramid Club, a "pit" about the size of a walk-in closet in New York. O'Neill and Belowsky, a Philadelphia native who used to perform in drag, did gigs there years ago.

"Oh, I did lots of things," O'Neill says. "Some of them I can't tell you about. . . . We don't talk about our Pyramid acts, especially when we're playing nuns in Tampa."

O'Neill keeps Catholic resource books on hand to brush up on her Catholicism. A paperback copy of Saints Preserve Us! sits in her dressing room. Because Late Nite involves the audience, O'Neill has to be on her doctrinal toes to play the role.

O'Neill has to be on her spiritual toes as well. This year at the height of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, O'Neill was playing Sister in St. Louis, where several high-profile clergy were accused of sex abuse with boys.

"I was afraid that people were going to make off-color jokes about it," O'Neill says. "And I was not going to put up with it as Sister. Sister wouldn't put up with that."

As it turned out, few patrons mentioned the scandal. "The audience seemed to be laughing more," O'Neill says. "It was a nervous laughter. This was a respite."

Before each show, Colleen O’Neill takes 30 seconds to focus herself right before she goes onstage.

When the scandal did come up, it was in a respectful manner. Sister was asked how she felt about what was going on.

"My bottom line in answering the question was never underestimate the power of prayer," O'Neill says. "And they loved the answer. It was a positive thing."

Late Nite was originally scheduled to play in St. Louis for several weeks, but it was extended again and again, turning into a 10-month run.

After each Late Nite performance, Sister collects donations for retired nuns. She has befriended real sisters and is an honorary nun with three orders.

She stands near the theater door, holding a wicker basket as people drop in dollar bills. In St. Louis, she collected more than $96,000 over the 10 months, she says.

Tonight, as the donation line progresses, one woman stops to tell Sister a joke that somehow manages to include the pope, communion wafers and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sister laughs and thanks her for the humor.

Others shake her hand and praise her performance.

Once the line is gone, Belowsky taps Sister and tells her that a small group of real nuns is still inside the theater. They usually meet nuns, priests and archbishops at the shows and wait to talk with them. But these nuns are busy. They have formed a circle around Libby and her friends and are praying for them.

Sister waits a few minutes but leaves before the praying is done. She has a couple of things on her agenda tonight. For one, she'll have to log onto her computer for some research. During a question-and-answer segment, she was asked whether it was okay to get married during Advent. Having no idea, O'Neill played it off with humor. "I'll be online tonight," she says.

But first, she says, heading for her dressing room, she has to get out of that habit and become O'Neill again. It's after 9, and she has less than an hour to get to her hotel room in time to watch Barbara Walters interview Ozzy Osbourne's family on 20/20. And then it's the Late Show with David Letterman.

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