by Milan Stitt (Dramatists Play Service)
Cast: 4 men, 5 women
In 1911 in a remote northern Michigan parish, a young nun, Sister Rita, mysteriously dies. Her superior, Father Rivard, is charged with the crime. As the trial unfolds four years later, the story alternates between the past and the present, revealing a conflicted relationship between the young nun and the priest. Sister Rita tries to inject color and life into the rural, drab town, bringing more tension to the surface. Part courtroom drama, part memory play, part romance, the play explores conflicts between duty to the church and duty to self, forbidden passions, and divisions between strict traditional morality and complex human emotions.