If you’re a fan of the Cincinnati Fringe, you might want to check out Jessica Dickey’s The Amish Project, the first work presented by Queen City Theater (which has operated for several years as Queen City Off-Broadway) in the black-box theater at the new School for Creative and Performing Arts. Dickey’s script, first presented at the New York International Fringe in 2008, portrays people she has imagined as affected by the 2006 Nickel Mines murders of several Amish girls in a one-room schoolhouse.
The one-woman production features Leah Strasser, a 2010 intern at Ensemble Theatre, as seven characters. Although dressed in traditional Amish garb — bonnet, long dress, black stockings — to convey two of the young victims, she also portrays non-Amish people, including the troubled gunman and his beleaguered wife, a sassy Puerto Rican teenager, an outspoken woman outraged by the shootings and a college professor who provides background about the Amish.
The Amish Project, presented by Queen City Theater, continues through Saturday July 30. Go here to read Rick Pender’s full review.
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2011.
