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Thespian Acts Like an Authentic Nun
Monday, April 21, 2008
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A three-week run of "Late Nite Catechism" begins prompltly at 7:30pm Tueday at the Temple for Performing Arts - and audiences are advised to be on time.
If not, late-goers have to deal with Sister, the domineering nun who runs the show, a mix of Sunday school and stand-up routine that developed 15 years ago in Chicago and has played across the nation. (Like other comedies at the Temple, including "Triple Espresso" and "Defending the Caveman," audiences can expect to play along.)
In the current production, the black-and-white habit belongs to Lela Frechette, the youngest of six children who grew up in a Ctholic family in upstate New York and later spent a summer in Okoboji.
Although she attended public schools in her hometown because the Catholic school was too far away, her father supplied stories from his eight years at Assumption College, a combined high school and college in central Massachussetts. There was one priest who had a tendency to whack students upside the head while they knelt in prayer. Why? "It's for the sins of the others," he would reply.
Despite these legends - or maybe because of them - Frechette said she would have had a better education at a Catholic school. She is even more convinced after three years touring the nation as Sisetr and adding to the more than $2 million the show has raised for various Catholic orders.
"Sister is everything from a strict disciplinarian to a warm and humorous person, which is endearing," she said.
After the show, audience members often tell the actress how much she reminds them of nuns from their childhood. For some, those memories are a little scary. For others, like the grown women who attend in pleated plaid skirts and knee-highs, they're kind of fun.
"They tell me, 'It was like being in my third grade class again,'" Frechette said. "The highest compliment I ever get is when people ask if I'm actually a nun."
She isn't. But when she's scolding her students - er, audience - she might as well be. "I'm certainly not going to hit them with a ruler," she said during an interview Tuesday. "But don't rell them that."
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