Edinburgh Fringe: A nun, a performer - and Bill Murray's sister

There were nine siblings in the Murray family. Four of the six brothers became film actors, and one, Bill, is an international superstar. But he is not the only one of the nine with a university degree in acting. That honour belongs to his sister, Nancy, who became a Roman Catholic nun.

This week and next, Nancy Murray is pulling in the crowds at the Edinburgh Festival with her one-woman show about the life of St Catherine of Siena.

Murray is not the only nun ever to break into show business. There was Belgium's Soeur Sourire, whose song "Dominique" was an unlikely entrant to Britain's Top Ten in 1963. More recently, there was Sister Wendy Beckett, the South-African born British art critic, whose first television series began broadcasting in 1992.

Nor, of course, is she the first member of the Murray family to draw a crowd. Bill Murray's roles in films such as Ghostbusters, Scrooged, Groundhog Day, and Lost in Translation have made his one of the world's most recognisable faces. Film buffs can also spot three other actors named Murray in bit parts in the above-named films. They are his brothers, Brian, who uses the surname, Doyle-Murray, John and Joel. A fifth brother, Andy, runs a restaurant in St Augustine, Florida, named Caddyshack, after the 1980 movie which Brian wrote and in which Bill starred.

But until this week, no British audience has seen their big sister, Nancy, who spent 28 years as a Roman Catholic nun in Illinois, teaching drama to middle-class kids and doing youth work in the impoverished Latino quarter.

In 2000, she moved to Adrian, in Michigan, where her Dominican order is based, and in the same year co-operated with another nun and drama teacher, Kathy Harkins, on writing a show based on new information that was coming to light about the life of St Catherine. But Kathy Harkins died of cancer that same year and Nancy Murray first performed the play at her co-author's funeral.

Her performance involves putting on an old-fashioned Dominican habit and an over-the-top Italian accent to draw her audience into the life of a Tuscan saint who died 627 years ago. She performs each role in the drama, including that of Pope Gregory. Her only props are a candle, a crucifix, a table, a chair, and a small bouquet of flowers.

Like St Francis of Assisi, St Catherine received the stigmata - the marks on the hands and feet that Christ would have received on the Cross. Her greatest political achievement was to help reunite the church by persuading the Pope to return from Avignon to Rome. The themes of her life's story were the plague, a fractured church and social unrest - in all of which Nancy Murray sees parallels with today's problems of Aids, migration and war.

It is not quite the dry, cynical worldly humour associated with brother Bill. But Nancy is proud that none of her brothers can boast a degree in acting, whereas she was sent by the Dominican Order to study drama at a university in Miami.

In the past seven years she has appeared in all five continents, performing either in English or Spanish, which she speaks fluently. This summer she will appear in Manila, East Timor, South Vietnam, Peru and Italy. In contrast with her brother, however, she makes no money from her appearances. She is staying with friends, rather than in a hotel, during the play's ten-day Edinburgh run, and proceeds from her appearances go back to the order.

In private, the Murrays are said to be a closely knit, mutually supportive hatch of siblings. In public, though, brother Bill has been a little unkind about his sister's stardom. In the opening section of his book, Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf, he wrote: "There are four of us who've tried showbusiness. Five, if you insist on counting my sister the nun, who does liturgical dance. To date, she's the only one insisting that she's in the business. I will include a liturgical dancer in showbusiness the day that one of them gets an encore."

Sister act

Born 1947, the third of nine children. Her father, Edward, an Irish-American lumber salesman, died in 1967. Her mother, Lucille, died in 1988.

Educated at Regina Dominican High School, Wilmette, Illinois. Entered the Adrian Dominican Order in 1966.

Trained at the Siena Heights College, and at Barry University, Miami, where she obtained a degree in drama.

1972-1985 taught drama and theology at the Regina Dominican High School.

1985-2000 youth minister in Chicago's latino district, based in St. Sylvester Parish on Fullerton.

2000 first performed the dramatised life of St Catherine of Siena at the author's funeral in Adrian.

August 2007 a 10-day season at the Edinburgh Festival, performing at St Paul's Church in Jeffrey Street.

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