It really is a flaming treat to be celebrating my 20th anniversary at the Loaf this way: sharing my memories of covering Charlotte's theater scene since 1987 and interviewing two-time Tony Award-winning actress Cherry Jones.

All of us can share this treat. We rarely get to behold a Pulitzer Prize Drama among the splashy spectacles packaged in the PAC's Broadway Lights Series. To also see the original above-the-title Broadway star of Doubt is unprecedented during the Loaf era.

John Patrick Shanley's gem, arriving at Belk Theater for an eight-performance run on April 17-22, couldn't be timelier. At a time when we're facing the multiple messes of a cocksure presidency, Shanley is asking us to question the whole notion that certitude is the mark of strength -- and doubt a mark of weakness. And at a time when we have ample reason to mistrust priests, Shanley is asking us if we have the wisdom and strength to suspend judgment.

Whether you see this struggle in a school context or in a political context -- invade now, check intelligence later; incarcerate now, delay trial indefinitely -- Doubt is very much Remedial American Idealism 101.

Portraying Sister Aloysius at a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, Cherry is pitted against the charismatic Father Flynn, who may or may not be carrying his chumminess with students beyond the bounds of decency. From Flynn's perspective, however, it's more like a pit bull grabbing hold of his priestly robes.

Having seen the original off-Broadway production, I can tell you that Doubt is the real deal if you're looking for gripping, provocative theater. Likewise, Jones' reputation for high-grade collegiality and meticulous preparation were quickly confirmed when I called her cell phone at the appointed time two weeks ago.

If you read our 30-minute conversation in its edited entirety, you'll find that this Parisian savior faire is anything but accidental. The reigning First Lady of the American Stage -- a native of Paris, Tennessee -- not only sees herself as following in a grand tradition, she takes special pleasure in the theater life. Among her colleagues.

Regal? I caught up with her at a picnic table under pine trees in Hershey, Penn.

Creative Loafing: First let me thank you personally for extending your touring commitment to Doubt.

Cherry Jones: Oh, I am so glad it worked out. Because I started this one, and I want to be able to put this one to bed.

You turned me from a liar into a prophet. I hadn't realized that you weren't committed to the whole tour when I looked at the web site early in the season. So I'm assuming that you had some misgivings about transferring Doubt from Broadway to some of the big auditoriums around the country?

Having gone from a 300-seat house to a 1,000-seat house at the Walter Kerr, I knew how the size only, in a way, helped the play. Because at times, it's almost Greek in its passion. And I knew that if I were ever going to tour in any play, this would be the play to tour with.

Yes, all touring houses are now too large for legitimate plays. But this play -- if you can hear this play, you get this play. This isn't a play that relies on your being able to see the teardrops falling from our eyes. This is about ideas, and it's passionate. It's as Oscar Wilde says, at one point in The Importance of Being Earnest, "We're going to hear a play tonight."

I saw it at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and I felt very fortunate to be sitting so close. And I had a certain amount of misgivings about how it would do on Broadway, but it received a thunderous reception.

Yeah. I think the larger house did it a world of good. Instead of playing it in a tiny little chapel, suddenly we were in a cathedral, you know? Now on these tours, we're doing it in a basilica, I guess.

Now I have actually seen you in Doubt, Imaginary Friends and The Heiress -- and I think you had already taken over in Angels in America when I saw both parts of that. I must say that your performance as Sister Aloysius was head and shoulders above everything else. Do you take a special satisfaction in introducing such a major character to the stage?

Oh, sure. It's just Heaven getting to start fresh with a character with no ghosts hanging around and no one's expectations judging how the play should be played. It's wonderful, and Doug Hughes, our remarkable director, was so wise in his direction of this play. That's another reason why I wanted to get to do the tour. This is just one of the best productions that this play will ever receive.

And I know that sounds arrogant, coming from one of the performers in this production, but it is so brilliantly balanced. And it takes a very mature director to direct this play. There will be beautiful productions around this country once the rights open up in September, and there will be some failed productions, because people will not understand how important it is to make Sister Aloysius almost appalling at times.

People come in with so much baggage now, unfortunately, about priests. They see a man in a collar, and they just automatically think he's guilty of something. And it's dreadful. Both John and Doug Hughes have made Aloysius this almost crazily tough character. There are people who love her right off the bat, because she is kind of nutty, and she is so tough, and yet they understand that she's doing it from a very profound love for the children.

Then there are other people who just think she should be burned at the stake! She's Joe McCarthy, she's the devil himself, she's this horrible wicked person who should never be allowed near children!

And people feel the same way about the priest. They feel like they've never seen a more Christlike individual. Charming, handsome, wonderful, loving -- everyone should be so lucky -- every child should be so lucky to be around a priest like that. Then the other half of the audience thinks he's this manipulative, arrogant, sonuvabitch.

This play is a tough sell, because of the subject matter. People just assume it's going to be this grim play about pedophilia, and it's not! That's the jumping-off point. We present this little parable onstage that then sends the audience to work with their own minds and hearts and souls and emotions and guts, trying to figure out what the truth is. And that's what the play is about.

It's about our own process of decision-making and our own uncomfortableness with doubt and uncertainty and our need to know the truth and to know that we're right.

That kind of gets into my next question, because the people that you play, like Catherine Sloper [The Heiress], Mary McCarthy [Imaginary Friends], or Sister Aloysius — these are not always the nicest of people. And I imagine to really do them justice, you need to discard your objective judgment and dive into them in a certain way. Is that a lot of fun, or do you find that frightening?

Oh no, it's fascinating getting to understand the psychology of a character. There are two things. I've read that Laurette Taylor said that the most important thing for an actor to have is imagination. And I would say that the second most important thing for an actor to have is great compassion, because you have got to understand your characters — of course, in a way that your characters would understand themselves.

You have to embrace their flaws and understand that it is their flaws that make them so fascinating in the play and so fascinating for the audience. Doug Hughes, again, who kept just staying on me and staying on me, because I kept wanting to make Aloysius in a way that people would understand why she's so tough and to love her. He was one who wisely just kept making her more and more appalling.

It's so funny, because last night I greeted a group of people who were in a tour, who were staying at my hotel. And I saw them after the play. Almost to a person, they thought the priest was innocent. As the actress playing Aloysius, immediately I start spinning off into, "Am I making her too tough now? Is she too irascible?"

But it's true that you really don't want to make her too unlikable to tip the balance.

What you have to understand is that, in playing her, the more certain she is and the more passionate she is about her certainty, the people who are drawn to that kind of argument are going to think, "She's right," and the people who are repulsed by that kind of argument are going to think she is not.

It's interesting because John Patrick Shanley — this is a great example, Perry — I actually spoke with John on Monday, day before yesterday. And he said that he gets a lot of e-mails, because he puts his e-mail address in the playbill, and he's continuing to do that on this tour. He said for a while there, a lot of the e-mails were thinking that the priest was guilty, and now they seem to be tipping back to thinking the priest is innocent.

And I heard that, and I thought, "Oh no!" And I mentioned that to our stage manager, and he died laughing. He said, apparently in our last stop, which was Washington, a city paper had bashed the play — or actually, Chris McGarry, who plays Father Flynn — saying that he is so clearly manipulative, that there was no doubt that he had done it. This is at the same time that John Shanley is getting more and more letters ... !

That's the thing about this play. Everyone thinks that they know, and that they're right.

Right. The key is right in the title — that one should have some sort of empirical uncertainty until all the facts are in about any probe.

That's right. As John said, when he was a boy, people with doubt were considered wise men and women, and now they're considered weak people. We're all expected to know that what we believe is true. Therefore, implicitly, that means what everybody else believes is not. What a wonderful world this would be if people could begin the decision-making process with, "I just don't really know. I'm going to have to listen."

I have read that your first formative theater experience was seeing Colleen Dewhurst, so I can really empathize with you because I saw her with George C. Scott in Desire Under the Elms at Circle in the Square, and I know how powerful an experience like that can be.

Oh, yeah!

I'm just wondering how it is, decades later, to be Cherry Jones and have that kind of stature yourself?

Well, I just don't believe I do. I just can't believe that's the case. There was something about those actors, certainly the stature of those people who were in their primes in the 40s and 50s and 60s in this country in the theater. It was a golden time for American theater! When you think, good Lord, of the work that was produced, and the people who were doing it, I'm proud to be carrying on the tradition as best I can.

But for our parents' generation, who got to see those people live on stage — maybe I over-romanticize it, maybe I get it too much romance and power — but I do think that because they just did it all the time, they must have been just so exceptional at what they did. And I would give anything to have been able to see more of them. I remember when Geraldine Page died — I had never seen Geraldine Page onstage, I had only seen her on film — and from that moment on, I swore that if there were a great performance, I was not going to miss it, that I would do anything to get to see it.

Because it's completely ephemeral, and it's gone.

Yeah, I can't give you my experience of seeing her in Strange Interlude. So it must be part of your ethos, just as much as it was part of Colleen's, that you almost have to defend yourself against feeling any kind of aristocratic regality. Because it's going to prevent you from actually doing the work that you need to do.

Well, I just don't take it seriously, because I don't think it's true. I have been given this mantle as — what is it that Miss Hayes always had? — the "Leading Lady of the American Stage." That's what it is, that's the mantle. You know, I've been very lucky to get to do a lot of work consistently in New York, in the 90s, and in these early aughts. But I know the number of brilliant actresses my age, younger, older, who are out there, who I look up to with great admiration.

And I think of us all as damn lucky that we're getting to keep the theater alive and vigorous in this country. Because it's been an uphill battle for all of our producers to survive the 70s and 80s. When I came to New York, the ABCs, the theater directory in the New York Times, was the height of a couple of inches only. I mean, it was dead! Then two years ago, when Doubt won the Tony, there were 11 straight plays on Broadway, and everyone was writing about what a fluke it was. Now again this year, because a lot of times people have no memory, they're writing about what a fluke it is that, this year, there are going to be 12 straight plays on Broadway! So maybe now it's less of a fluke, and it's starting to be what people, in these very difficult days for our nation — they're hungry to hear ideas again and not just song and dance, and not just reality shows, and not just the lowest common denominator of entertainment. I think people are wanting to have their minds exercised again.

So do you feel like you fought the good fight and emerged victorious?

No, I'll never have that kind of hubris ñ ever! We all know that the fate of the theater depends greatly on the fate of the economy. Because it's too expensive, even at regional theaters. It is sort of a boutique service in that it's a one-of-a-kind, highly labor-intensive event that happens only once a day at a certain hour, and for a limited amount of time.

So the minute the economy goes south, which with the mortgage debacle and everything else that's happening, to make a living in theater will fall by the wayside, I'm afraid. Theater will never die. It will survive in church basements and community auditoriums and hole-in-the-wall theaters where people are holding down three jobs to do theater at night. Because people who love theater are never going to let it die. It's just what we do.

From the way you talk and the way you bear yourself onstage, I don't get the impression that you have any desire for Hollywood fame or any kind of glamour or adulation — that theater and doing good theater is really what you're about.

It really is. And I have been so lucky beyond anything I ever imagined, in terms of my success, that if I were told tomorrow that I would be basically playing in The Cherry Orchard, carrying the samovar for the rest of my career, I would feel damn lucky. Because it means I get to be in the green room, hanging out with young actors every night.

It's also the camaraderie of theater. It's just a wonderful place to get to go every night of your working life, and commune with others. I remember Jason Robards — I got to have this remarkable, brief conversation with Mr. Robards at the very end of his life, and it was while I was doing A Moon for the Misbegotten. He at first was apologizing for not getting to see it. He pointed to the obvious dent in his cranium.

He said, "I've been meaning to come, but I had this brain cancer and brain tumor."

That's a good excuse!

He was sort of laughing in that wonderful sort of gallows-humor way of his, and then finally he confessed that he couldn't come see it because there were too many ghosts there for him and he couldn't possibly see it. Then he started telling me these unbelievable stories.

And the thing about Jason Robards was he would be talking about the stagehands or this person or that person from 40 years ago — he not only knew their first names, he knew their last names 40 years later! He just loved the camaraderie of it.

And I have to tell you one quick Colleen story, since you're a lover of Colleen's. He said that on nights when she didn't like the audience, and he was upstage and she was downstage and she would turn around and face him, she'd make her false teeth come out and go, "Vra, vra, vra, vra, vra!"

Don't you ever do that!

Then in The Pieta in the transition between Act III and Act IV, she would be cradling him as the night turned into dawn, and she would coo into his ear to speed up the last act, because he had a new babysitter at home, and she knew that the boys would probably burn down the house. Oh, gosh! But anyway, the camaraderie.

You get all this acclaim for being the first out-of-the-closet lesbian to win the Tony Award. Was it that camaraderie and that ethos of just doing it and being among the actors that shaped your decision at the outset of your career — did you come out because it didn't make any difference whether you achieved fame or whether it destroyed your career?

Yeah, yeah. I didn't care. It never occurred to me to go through life lying about anything because it just doesn't seem healthy — if you have a choice. And I sensed I had a choice, because I was going into theater. And as you know, theater is rife with homosexuals.

Rife!

Rife!

It's great to hear a gay person say that theater is crawling with 'em! But you look at all the plays that are onstage on Broadway and off-Broadway, and it's tough to find a straight play sometimes.

Oh, listen. I had a lot of straight playwright friends who were ready to shoot themselves in the early 90s! Because thank God there was the kind of response to the AIDS crisis that there was within the playwriting community and the theater community. But I know it was tough, especially for male straight playwrights. They felt besieged, or just put-out-to-pasture I guess is the better way to put it.

It's OK, they're coming back.

Angels in America has receded into the distance, and it's safe for both gay and straight playwrights to inhabit the same landscape?

I believe so. We need more women playwrights and women directors, but that will come. It's hard for women playwrights and women directors. There are just not many of them. There are more women playwrights than women directors. That's a real small club.

Well, going out on tour is clearly something you didn't have to do, but is part of your motivation getting out to the next generation and empowering them? Do you spend part of your time with younger aspiring theater people?

Yes, yes. Every chance I get, I go and talk to students. Oh, and I love it. Because like anything else, when you give a little bit of yourself to others, you're always the main beneficiary. I come back to work that night, having been forced to listen to what I'm telling them, and then to put it into practice with my own work.

Just simple things, like making sure that at all times, you are completely listening. You know, when you've done something a million times, there are moments when you can be doing it ñ you can plug in and find that your mind has wandered for a moment. You're doomed to hell when that happens.

That's one example. But I do find when I go and talk to the students, that it's so helpful to all of us in the room. Because I take their enthusiasm and their innocence with it all, and starting off and not knowing where their careers will be and if they will have careers in the theater. I feel very tender towards them.

I hope you'll enjoy Charlotte when you come here and that people will appreciate all that you bring.

Well, I hope we can get them out to see it and make them understand it's not just a scary play about a pedophile!