Rosebud Theatre’s Amish Project to be performed in Vancouver
By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor
Photo Courtesy of Morris Ertman
Jessica Dickey’s fictional exploration is based on a shooting that occurred in 2006 at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania. Five Amish girls died and five were injured.
The Amish Project’s fictional characters include two Amish girls, the gunman and his widow.
The Rosebud School of the Arts students and graduates who comprised cast and crew in the Rosebud production will reprise their roles at Dark Glass Theatre. Angela Konrad, who came to Rosebud to direct The Amish Project last summer, is also artistic director of Dark Glass Theatre, where the play will be remounted.
Cast member Heidi MacDonald considers it a gift to bring the play to a wider audience.
“It’s one of the most beautifully written plays I’ve ever encountered,” MacDonald said. “This is a play that I want everybody to see. This show is so universal and transformative, (and) it means so much to me to get to share it with more people.”
She looks forward to hearing the responses of an urban audience.
“The way that people in a rural culture (around Rosebud) talk about issues that come up in this show may be talked about differently in an urban setting,” she said. “I’m really curious to see how an urban audience responds to a show that was so massively adored by a more rural audience.”
MacDonald presents a challenging perspective, because she plays the role of the gunman, Eddy. “When you first meet him, you almost can’t help but like him, because he’s just very down-to-earth,” she said. “You can’t help but love this guy who’s like you or me. He wants a happy life with his family. But there’s a darkness underneath that (his wife) Carol goes on to say later that he couldn’t keep down.
“We all have things in our lives that we’ve done that we wish we could take back,” MacDonald added. “But there is a divine forgiveness that can reach into that and set us free. And so playing the gunman is for me a very condensed journey of the story of salvation.”
MacDonald credits the sold-out Albertan audiences of The Amish Project with its opportunity to be remounted in Vancouver.
“People encountered it and kept on talking about it and kept on sharing it with people,” she said. “That creates an incredible sense of gratitude in me because the story’s not easy to receive. Because of that, this story is able to have a life somewhere else.”