Debora Bercier is tall for her height and she takes the stage the way the way Columbus must have taken the New World: “With all due respect to those that were here already, ” she seems to say, “All this is mine, now.”

What she actually says, is, “The venom clamors of a jealous woman poisons more deadly than mad dog’s tooth.  It seems his sleeps were hindered by thy railing, and there-of comes it that his head is light.”  She says more.  The other woman, the wife of a man who seems to have been made mad, shrinks under the heat of the Abbess’s feverish scorn.  I ask Debbie why the Abbess is so feisty.  She tells me, her character “…never had the desire to be a nun, but was forced into it, and so she feels resentful.  She wanted to be a wife and mother.  And she’s bored with her vocation as an Abbess.  There are very few nuns or children to take care of.  Certainly no men!  But… now, for the first time, a man has come into her domain.  An opportunity to truly protect and minister to this man, and no-one will prevent her from experiencing this.”  The woman who the Abbess is yelling at isn’t that different from her, she tells me, “She just has the life I wanted!”