Arts & Entertainment
One Woman: Many Voices
Amish school shooting aftermath
By Philip Dorian
Both the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Associations of New York Theatre Critics present an annual Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. (There's no such Tony Award.) Such plays include career retrospectives (Billy Crystal's), political commentary (Will Ferrell), and thinly disguised stand-up comedy (well, Billy Crystal).
But the best of them, the most complex and difficult to perform, are multi-peopled story-plays with the one actor playing all the characters. I've seen more than 20 such plays over the last three years. The Amish Project is one of the very best.
Written and performed by Jessica Dickey, it's an insightful 70-minute play about the Amish community's composed reaction and forgiving manner following the horrific October 2006 school shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Dickey plays eight precisely-drawn characters with deceptive ease, including the gunman's distressed widow and a little girl who survived the incident. (The latter is as accurate an impersonation as you'll ever see performed.)
One of the characters, a professor, addresses a question that was on the minds of many: "How can the Amish forgive such a thing?" "There's more to them than what happened on October 2," he offers. "They are a very private people." It doesn't answer the question, just sort of says it's none of our business.
There's nary a hint of sensationalism in The Amish Project, but the drama is intense. Costumed in traditional Amish dress and bonnet, with only her face and hands revealed ("hidden like a clean secret" is the inspired simile), Ms. Dickey, very well directed (without fear of pauses) by Sarah Cameron Sunde, brings fully realized characters of both sexes, from ages six to sixty, to vivid life.
"The Amish Project" is at Rattlestick Theater, 224 Waverly Place, West Village, NYC through July 12. Performances are Monday at 8 p.m.; Wednesday-Saturday at 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets ($35): (212) 868-4444 or online at www.smarttix.com.
