Watching Jones and O'Byrne onstage, it leaps out at you that these actors not only love what they're doing, but that they live to do it. Their challenge is to plant uncertainty and divide audiences. Jones and O'Byrne do their jobs well. Their performances -- along with Shanley's trademark twists and turns -- are keeping theatergoers on the edge of their seats. So much so that, Doubt recently set a new Kerr house record.

"It goes by so fast you don't realize it's ninety minutes," states Jones. "It's like you step on and get off!" O'Byrne reponds.

Growing up Methodist in Tennessee, the Catholic Church, laughs Jones, was the most exotic thing in town. Her two best friends were Catholic. "I'd go to mass with them and they'd show me these little slivers of bone that were relics of saints. I used to wonder, with so many Catholic churches, if there'd be enough to go around."

Frequently, she heard stories about the nuns. "Their fiefdom was the school system," reports Jones. "They were trained to be field marshals: discipline, order, rigidity. When I heard how they used clickers in church, I couldn't help but laugh. Click, you kneel! Click, you stand!"

Amid the seriousness of Doubt, Jones points out, "I've found humor to be mined, not surprising since John Patrick is also the author of Moonstruck."

She adds, "I'm having fun pleading Aloysius' case - especially the one about ball point pens, which she says should never have allowed to enter schools because they make students press down and end up writing like monkeys. No one has penmanship like someone who went to Catholic school! You can spot one a mile away."

She remembers the time when young men going into the priesthood were deified in their communities: "But, sadly, once they were priests, they were never allowed a normal adult relationship with anyone outside the cloth who understood what they're going through. That had to do something to the soul and mind. We're sexual beings. I can't believe that eventually Catholic priests won't be allowed to marry. Otherwise, they're going to be beating the bushes looking for vocations."

In fact, Doubt's battle of the wills becomes a vicious cat and mouse game. Jones aptly compares it to "something akin to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral."

The onstage confrontations between herself and O'Byrne, are meant to roil audiences, but, laughs Jones, "they seem to really enjoy them!"

Sister Aloysius, observes Jones, "is a formidable character. She runs her fiefdom with an iron hand. She believes in her methods and vigorously imposes them. Her instincts are everything; and when it comes to her suspicions about this priest, she has no doubt whatsoever."

She plans to be in Doubt for as long as they want her. "It's been an exciting adventure. We began in this tiny rehearsal space, opened at MTC and, as we played before our audiences, we realized something extraordinary was happening between them and this play. No matter how we present our case, what we find fascinating is that audiences are never quite convinced."

"It's amazing," admits O'Byrne with a puzzled grin. "They're always so divided. Flynn has his loyal supporters, who feel Aloysius has railroaded him. One will say, 'He's guilty!" and another will say, ëNo, she's guilty!'"

"They feel the play is theirs," Jones states, "and if there's a false moment they'd feel betrayed. From the second the house lights dim, audiences tell us they're completely engaged. It's because it's so much fun. There's not a single scene where you go, 'I hope this goes well' or 'I can't wait to get past this.'

"What's bizarre," adds O'Byrne, "is that when audiences are leaving the theatre, they're not talking about us, the actors, but about the play. It's become a very personal thing."

"It's gotten so intense," laughs Jones, "that it's been suggested I might need a body guard when I leave the theatre! But what's really interesting is that those people who agree that Aloysius is right merely say ëFather Flynn's guilty,' while those who think she's wrong call her ëdespicable.'"

O'Byrne even recalls one woman crying when someone said his character was guilty. "She said, 'You're nuts! How can you think that?'"

The featured cast, which was Tony-nominated: Heather Goldenhersh [Freedom-land, Last Dance] plays a younger nun who's quite intimidated by Sister Aloysius' methods; and Adriane Lenox [the 2005 Tony winner and Shug Avery in the Atlanta premiere of the musical adaptation of The Color Purple, The Moon in Caroline or Change at the Public], who portrays the student's mother.

Jones and O'Byrne are highly complimentary of Lenox and Goldenhersh. Of them and O'Byrne, Jones says, "I cannot wait to get to the theatre to climb into that ësandbox' and fuss at ëem."

In an analogy to the recent baseball steroid scandals, O'Byrne confessed that he takes "performance-enhancing drugs." A huge smile erupts as he adds, "My pill is Cherry, eight times a week. It makes me feel good all the time and it also give me strength to play when I go out onstage. My ëdealer' is Shanley, who's been dealing out ëdrugs' for a long time now, but not ever as potent as this one."

He and Jones admit taking another "pill," which a lot of actors find hard to swallow. "It's called a director -- our director," states O'Byrne, referring to Tony Award-winner Hughes, who also directed him in Frozen.

"Doug is the sweetest, smartest and gentlest director," reports Jones. "But you shouldn't be surprised at those qualities, since he grew up in that proverbial trunk [the son of Barnard and Helen Hughes]. What I like about Doug is that early in rehearsals he'll take you through the play and then allows you to go back and work on details."

She states that she owes Hughes and Shanley "my first born!" Adding with a laugh, "which is seeming more and more unlikely to happen."

Jones explained that the greatest gift for an actor is to be in a play "that you want to keep doing - and I've wanted to do this more than any play. I want to keep finessing it, because the more we finess the better we get."

Of her chosen profession, Jones says, "I wish there were more opportunities for those breaking into acting. Unless you give yourself completely, it's difficult. Even during the hardest times, it seemed effortless, but it wasn't. I always tell my agents if a Quaker would do it, I'll do it. But, luckily, I've been able to devote my efforts to what I wanted to do. Because of that, I'm not the most well rounded person. But there've certainly been other compensations."

Regarding film vs. theater, she states, "In film, you play a character. There's no projection. The camera's in front of you and the boom mike looms overhead. It's a world of fifteen-second bites. You have make-up and wardrobe fussing over you and 300 others concentrating on that tiny sequence. It's incredible to have all that manpower and imagination to bring to life one moment.

"I love the language of the theater," she continues. "There's a heightened, articulate, poetic language that I crave in my work that I just don't think you get much of a shot at in movies, even the best of them." There's something childlike about theater, she observes. "You enter the fantasy. You wrap yourself around the audience and are your character. And you can never forget the persons in those seats in the last row of the balcony. You must project to reach them. Even in your offstage moments, in the wings or doing a quick change, you're 'out there' because you're listening, watching, totally immersed and involved."