Improvisation, by the Good Book

Dust off your catechism texts. Sister’s back in town, and you Catholics out there had better have your church doctrine down cold--or else.

Maripat Donovan’s “Late Nite Catechism,” which had a healthy run a few months ago at the Henry Fonda, is back for an extended engagement Upstairs at the Coronet. She’s not really a nun--although she is absolutely convincing as one. Big and hearty, she is actually an actress. A Chicago native, she plied her trade in that city’s flourishing small theater scene, where “Late Nite,” co-written by Vicki Quade, premiered in 1993.

Since then, Donovan has toured “Late Nite” widely, often settling in the same city for months at a time. For instance, the Boston run lasted two years--one with Donovan at the helm, and another with a replacement actress. She also did a one-year stint off-Broadway, where the show is currently in its fourth year. It’s an established franchise, with productions running simultaneously in Philadelphia, New Orleans, St. Paul, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

And how long does Donovan intend to play L.A.? “Eternity,” she says, with a ready laugh. “L.A. is the largest Catholic archdiocese in the U.S., and people here are so friendly and outgoing. They participate on a very good level.”

For Donovan, 45, audience participation is key. Her Sister--a sort of Don Rickles in a habit--interacts freely with the audience, her “students” in an adult catechism class. Those participants who correctly answer her questions receive plastic religious trinkets as a reward. Those who act up or answer back, beware. Sister honed her teaching skills during the baby boom, when Catholic schools crammed as many as 50 students into a classroom. In other words, this tough Catholic cookie has mastered the fine art of disciplining large crowds--and she’s seen you before.

One of the most charming things about this latest incarnation is the venue, which replicates a parochial school classroom, down to the student artwork on the walls. Donovan solicited the drawings from third- and fourth-graders at Resurrection School in East Los Angeles.

“I asked the kids to make me two drawings each--a picture of Mary, and one of what they thought heaven looked like,” Donovan says. “Some of the heaven drawings are a real scream. One little boy drew the Cowboys and the Rams playing in heaven. That was his idea of paradise.”

A longtime rehearsal hall catering to stars from Errol Flynn to John Travolta, the 168-seat Coronet space was reconfigured especially for “Late Nite.” Overseeing the transformation was Donovan herself, using skills she developed as a licensed contractor in between acting gigs in Chicago.

Two more apparently dissimilar careers are difficult to imagine, but for Donovan, it was a logical transition. “When I was in college, I did a huge amount of work in technical theater,” she says. “I learned how to use all the tools, how to weld, everything.

“Chicago is a big theater town--it has 185 theater-producing companies and a huge experimental theater scene. If you have some talent, you can work all the time. But you don’t necessarily make a living, so you have to have an alternative career.”

At first, Donovan worked for her brother-in-law, at that time the largest buyer and restorer of HUD houses in the Chicago area. She later started her own company, but her booming contracting work threatened to swamp her acting aspirations.

“I was working 18 hours a day, doing fancy, high-end restorations--Frank Lloyd Wright houses, $850,000 jobs,” she says. “It got to be too much. So I scaled back, got rid of my crews, did small jobs. And it was surprising. I made almost as much money as I did when I had all that overhead. So, I got back into working in the theater, and I just did the contracting to pay my rent.”

Donovan discovered her acting niche while attending Catholic school on Chicago’s South Side. “I was a troublemaker, a bad student,” she claims. “I hated school. Then I signed up for a theater class. It was like I had been standing in a cold, dark hallway and someone at the end of the hall opened the door to a lighted room and said, ‘Come in, this is where you’re supposed to go.’ ”

Donovan’s portrayal of Bottom in an all-girl high school version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” an entry in the Chicago Drama Festival, won her a scholarship to Chicago’s Loyola University. After graduation, she worked for a few years as a photo stylist at a large commercial photography studio, where she employed her technical experience building sets for photo shoots. Years of work in Chicago’s small theaters, both in front of and behind the scenes, followed. Then, at a fateful dinner party, Donovan was entertaining the guests with anecdotes about the lives of the saints.

“A friend of mine said, ‘That’s hilarious. You ought to do something with that,’ ” Donovan says. “I asked my writing partner, Vicki Quade, if she’d be interested, and she said, ‘Yes.’ Then I called the Live Bait Theater, where I had done a lot of technical direction, and asked if they had a late-night slot.”

Since her initial work with Quade, the show has become more improvisational in tone, but the basic form stays the same. In striking contrast to most modern-day portrayals of nuns in the media, from Christopher Durang’s pernicious Sister Mary Ignatius to the dithering stereotypes of “Nunsense” and “Sister Act,” Donovan’s affectionate comic portrayal is refreshingly respectful.

It’s a point the actress prides herself on. “Nuns are portrayed as psychopaths or nincompoops, women who are unable to take care of themselves in the real world,” Donovan grouses. “But not only are they capable and wise enough to care for themselves, they care for us too, at all stages of our lives--in schools, in hospitals, in nursing homes. These nuns dedicate their lives to others, and it’s not just because that’s the only job they could get. There’s a spiritual element to it, a love of God that is channeled through their care for the old or the sick.”

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If Donovan likes nuns, then nuns return the compliment, numbering among her biggest fans. “I did the show for the Sisters of St. Agnes at their mother house in Wisconsin,” she recalls. “There were 250 nuns in the audience, their median age was about 67. And they were on fire, screaming with laughter. They were so rowdy that the show ran an hour longer than usual.”

Yet Donovan is keenly aware that nuns are an endangered species. Not only are nuns dwindling in number but they are also aging, and there are too few younger nuns to care for the old-timers. “For a nun, age 70 is a spring chicken,” she jokes. “That’s when they just start thinking about their second career. Nuns don’t retire until they absolutely have to. They work until they can’t anymore.”

As Donovan points out to her audiences, money is scarce and the future uncertain for many elderly nuns. Donovan does her best to rectify the situation by soliciting money for needy nuns after every show. In one year alone, she collected more than $100,000.

But helping needy nuns can be a challenge in surprising ways. In Toronto, Donovan collected $5,000 for three elderly school sisters of Notre Dame. “They were retired, but teaching English as a second language to immigrants out of their tiny, run-down house,” she says. “They had this crummy little television and ancient shag carpeting that was really terrible. They thanked me very much for the money. Then a few days later, they called me and said, ‘We were wondering if it was OK with you if we gave half the money to the battered women’s shelter down the alley, and half to the homeless shelter.’ I told them, ‘Girls, this is your money to fix up your house.’ And they said, ‘But the others need it so much more.’ ”

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“LATE NITE CATECHISM,” Upstairs at the Coronet, 366 La Cienega Blvd., second floor. Dates: Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 5 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Indefinitely. Price: $37. Phone: (877) 386-6968.