One-woman ‘Amish Project’ finds inspiration in school shooting tragedy
National tragedies, wars and other situations often impact how audiences react to plays, movies and television shows they see. Plays scheduled a year in advance of a production may become more timely or difficult to stage because of certain events.
Jessica Dickey’s “The Amish Project” is one of those plays that is almost always too timely and often a sensitive subject for audiences. The one-woman play is based on the real events involving a shooting at an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania in 2006.
American Stage in St. Petersburg considered canceling its 2013 production of the play because it was scheduled just a few months after 26 people, mostly children, were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“There were conversations about whether it would be too difficult in the aftermath of Newtown,” said Katherine Michelle Tanner, who starred in that production and has performed it several times since. She brings the play to her new Tree Fort Productions Projects theater company in Sarasota, where it opens Jan. 12.
Even though the number of school shootings continues to increase each year, Tanner said the play “touches people wherever they are in their life. It’s a message people need to hear every year. The message echoes on and it’s one of the plays I’ll champion as long as I can because I love it so much.”
Tanner takes on seven main characters, mostly young girls who were students at the small rural school, along with a few other people who appear briefly and share the events of the day of the school shooting, the fears of the students, the hope and, ultimately the inspiration that they provide.
Dickey read interviews about the incident and turned it into a play, and she starred in the New York production. The New York Times wrote that she gives such a strong performance “that she makes it easy to overlook something else: the play is also a remarkable piece of writing.”
Tanner said she appreciates the non-linear structure and the way she captures a sense of the people involved.
Arts Newsletter: Sign up to receive the latest news on the Sarasota area arts scene every Monday
Behind the Scenes: Recognizing how Florida's policies can stifle artistic expression
“This is one of those plays that is doing humanity a service by reminding them to be as empathetic and kind as they can,” Tanner said.
The production reunites Tanner with Todd Olson, the former producing artistic director of American Stage, who first directed her in the play in St. Petersburg and has done so several times across the country, including a 2015 production at the late Banyan Theater in Sarasota.
She switches characters, ages and personalities about 135 times during the course of the play. “It’s almost like eating seven meals at once and taking a bite off each plate,” she said. “But when I do it, it feels like I’ve been playing all day in my backyard and the sun comes down and mom calls me in for dinner when it gets dark. The more prepared I am, the more I feel total freedom.”
‘The Amish Project’
By Jessica Dickey. Directed by Todd Olson. Runs Jan. 12-Feb. 11, Tree Fort Productions Projects, 3501 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $40. treefortproductionsprojects.com
Follow Jay Handelman on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Contact him at jay.handelman@heraldtribune.com. And please support local journalism by subscribing to the Herald-Tribune.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: A school shooting in an Amish community inspires one-woman play
