When’s the last time you were totally certain of something? I mean really, really sure. Not an algebra problem or the name of the capital of Malaysia, but hard things like whether or not your neighbor is the one strewing trash all over the alley; or if your teenager was telling the truth about a dubious friend being drug‑free; or if your memories of that high school dance, now decades in the past, are true to the way things actually happened.

Now, what if your being sure or not meant that a person’s life hung in the balance? That’s the framework for “Doubt,” John Patrick Shanley’s Tony Award‑winning play, now on stage at ASU’s Gammage Auditorium through Dec. 10. (See www.asugammage.com for ticket information.)

In a time when so many people seem willing to bet their lives on this belief system or that, there’s probably a need for Shanley’s probing account of a nun’s investigation into the reported pedophilia of a priest. Nuns in the theater have been fluff (“The Sound of Music”) and the brunt of broad humor (“Nunsense” and “Late Night Catechism”), but in “Doubt,” which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Catholic school principal Sister Aloysius is a pit bull on the loose, as she pursues the truth (Or is it the truth as she wants it to be?) about Father Flynn’s suspected molestation of a 12‑year‑old boy, who is also the school’s first and only African‑American student.

It’s tempting to say “they don’t write ‘em like this anymore,” but the play’s existence counters that assertion. Even so, new dramas in which deep issues are confronted seem to be harder than ever to find, perhaps because of the very moral certainty Shanley’s script takes to task.

“It’s an important play for the country to see,” says Cherry Jones, who plays Sister Aloysius.

“It’s a rarity for a new American play to have both audience appeal and important subject matter.”

Jones won a second Tony Award for her portrayal of the crusading nun on Broadway. (The first was for her performance in 1995's Lincoln Center production of “The Heiress.”) So, what is she doing on the road with the same play?

“I didn’t realize it wasn’t the case anymore that actors on Broadway would go on tour. My dear friend Julie Harris must have been the last of the touring originators,” Jones says.

But it’s more than that.

“I’m just not through with this play,” she adds.

“It’s the most rewarding thing to perform, the single most engaging play I’ve worked on in 30 years of theater.”

Those thirty years of theater, she might have added, have included plenty of movies along the way. Jones portrayed matriarch Grandma Buggy in “Divine Secrets of the Ya‑Ya Sisterhood” (2002), as well as roles in two M. Night Shyamalan films, “Signs” (2002) and “The Village” (2004). In “Ocean’s 12” (2004), she was Matt Damon’s mom.

Given that track record, Jones could very likely be picking up additional character roles on screen, work that would be more lucrative and, one assumes, easier than digging fresh feelings out of the same character every night, six nights a week. But Jones is devoted to the theater and to the very act of getting it right–or as right as right can be–again and again and¼

“I joke that as an actor I must be obsessive‑compulsive. We go to the same place every night, put on the same clothes, walk out on the same stage and say the same lines,” she says.

Obsessive‑compulsive, perhaps. But a perfectionist, for sure. Jones complained after seeing a video of her Tony‑Award winning performance in “The Heiress” that she wasn’t any good. As for her present Tony‑winning portrayal:

“I’ve done it about 540 times at this point, and there are lines I’m simply not happy with at all. There are times when the muse is present and you stick it like an Olympic athlete. And there are times when that doesn’t happen.”

She looks forward to trying to “stick it” at Gammage.

Jones adds that “Doubt” has unexpected humorous moments, when hilarity seems to rule the evening–perhaps not really unexpected, coming from a playwright whose best known work to date was the light‑hearted screenplay for 1988's “Moonstruck.”

“Some people think it’s a grim play about pedophilia. It isn’t. It’s about doubt, about decision making, about how we get through life,” Jones says.

“What John is trying to do with this play, is to remind us that doubt and uncertainty, and being able to sit comfortably with that, is a mark of maturity and of the ability to wrestle with the big issues in our world. We must be able to reason as a nation, and as a people on this globe. We are so bound and determined to know what is right and what is true.

“Certainty is a great narcotic, really.”

In her work, Jones is forever uncertain, staying far from any feelings of being pleased or even finished:

“There’s a wonderful line, spoken by Martha Graham to Agnes deMille: ‘No artist is ever pleased. There’s no satisfaction whatever at any time; only a divine, queer dissatisfaction.”