Agnes Of God Author:John Pielmeier At the opening of John Pielmeier's powerful Drama, Agnes of God, Sister Agnes is brought to court psychiatrist Dr. Martha Livingstone, who will determine whether she is sane. Startlingly naive, so innocent as to seem angelic, the 21 year old nun stands accused of bearing a child in the convent and strangling it with its umbilical cord - none of... more » which she can now remember.
Dr. Livingstone, shrewdly rational and agnostic, is convinced that the innocence of this magnetic, beautiful young woman hides the scars of her childhood, marked by shocking cruelty. But the convent;s worldly Mother Superior, Mother Miriam Ruth, believes that Agnes is "blessed", "touched by God" in some mysterious way that science cannot explain. The question of whether Agnes is quilt of the crime is enmeshed in that of whether she is mad...or sainted. The battle between Mother Miriam Ruth, who wishes to protect Agnes's fragile spirit, and Dr. Livingstone, who wants to heal her shattered mind, becomes a fierce examination of man's conflicting needs for rational certainty and for myster and fath, conducted in a play of striking lyric beauty and dramatic force.« less