Having reviewed The Amish Project with the same star and director about two years ago in St. Petersburg, I didn’t feel the same effect on opening night in Sarasota. Probably that was because, as in the play, news came earlier in the day of the senseless shooting deaths of unarmed marines in Chattanooga, TN. It really brought home the message of one of the characters near the play’s end: “Shit like this happens every day now.”
Should viewers also wonder, with another character, “Where was God?” Or will a message of forgiveness of the murderer follow? Should it surprise that neither play nor reality occasioned immediate pleas for gun control?
As The Amish Project makes clear, a man with no history of violence seems an unlikely person to seek out victims who were apart from the larger community, as were Amish schoolgirls near Nickel Mines, PA, in 2006 (or, in fact, marines on a military base in 2015). Exploring the inciting incident of the drama and its theme of forgiveness, a single actress (the prodigiously talented Katherine Michelle Tanner) represents seven fictional characters. Their narratives are about themselves, their beliefs, their observations of Amish culture, and the aftermath of the murder.
The main Amish narrator, Anna, 14, uses a series of chairs to change characters and activity. Most effectively she draws a number of girlfriends and family, as well as the shooter, on two blackboards as she provides background and witness. (In my last reviewed production, she used glass enclosures around the school space and wrote and drew backwards. This scene design was better for seeing Tanner’s face and hearing her speak, since with her back to the audience, she was sometimes hard to hear. The blackboards have probably been a result of the production being toured.)
The main English (non-Amish) narrator, a professor who’s studied and taught about Amish history and culture, weaves his lecture in and out of the action scenes. He stresses the forgiveness theme.
Of the other two non-Amish characterizations, the least expected is the wife of the gunman--hard, cigarette smoking, still in love with her husband even though he wrote a note saying he wanted to rape the schoolgirls. A 16-year-old Hispanic seems to be repeating the problem her mother had--pregnancy at an early age and unwed. I found her least integrated in the story.
Dorian Boyd has provided a wealth of sound both musically and not. Maybe a bit too much. Also Tanner keeps using a clicker, which is distracting; one would think she could just make transitions with voice, gesture, or stance by now.
The wood Don Laurel Jordan chose for his set evoked that used by Amish in Pennsylvania for their barns and in that fatal schoolhouse. They pulled the latter down immediately in reality so it would not be given a significance, such as a travel destination or a historical structure or even a tomb.
I wonder how or if the Amish have reacted to Jessica Dickey’s well-written, if occasionally static, play. Will any of them in Sarasota attend Todd Olson’s well-directed production? For both Amish and English, it’s more timely than should be wished.
