Theater Review - 'The Amish Project' - At Rattlestick, Jessica Dickey’s Play Explores a School Shooting - NYTimes.com

Theater Review - 'The Amish Project' - At Rattlestick, Jessica Dickey’s Play Explores a School Shooting - NYTimes.com.

Jessica Dickey is giving such an extraordinary performance in “The Amish Project” at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater that she makes it easy to overlook something else: the play is also a remarkable piece of writing. Ms. Dickey the actress has herself to thank for the compelling material; she is also the playwright. The success of the piece is all the more impressive because any description of it sends up a “cheesy exploitation” red flag. The play is inspired by the killing of five girls in a hostage-taking at an Amish school in Lancaster County, Pa., in October 2006, yet beyond a few facts drawn from the incident, it is fictional; the characters are imagined by Ms. Dickey. It’s as if someone offered a drama called “Personal Stories of 9/11 That I Just Made Up.” But any trepidation is dispelled almost as soon as the lights come up on Ms. Dickey, wearing traditional Amish dress nicely complemented by Lauren Helpern’s sparse set. Ms. Dickey, under Sarah Cameron Sunde’s direction, is completely convincing as she switches among the play’s seven characters. That is no easy feat, since those characters include both the gunman and two of his young victims.