In December of 2012, just as St. Petersburg’s American Stage Theatre Company was planning a regional premiere of “The Amish Project,” Jessica Dickey’s one-woman play about the 2006 school shootings in the Amish community of Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania, a similar tragedy struck when 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 students and six staff members.
“We were all saying, ‘We can’t possibly do a school shooting play right now! It’s just too raw,” recalls Todd Olson, then producing artistic director at American Stage and now head of the Columbia Festival of the Arts in Maryland. “But a few people said, ‘We need to tell this story now more than ever.’ So we went the opposite of our fears and I’m really glad we did.”
Katherine Michelle Tanner in "The Amish Project." / Photo by Chad Jacob courtesy American Stage Theatre Company
Olson received more positive and meaningful feedback after that production than any other during his tenure at American Stage. Today, just a month after the church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, with Sarasota actor Katherine Michelle Tanner preparing to reprise her multi-faceted role in a Banyan Theater production opening Saturday, Olson is more convinced than ever that the time is right for audiences to see this play about unimaginable tragedy and unconditional forgiveness.
“There’s a line in the script that says, ‘How convenient for you that you don’t have a TV; these things happen every day,’ says Olson, who also directed Tanner in the same show in Oklahoma in April and in Maryland last month. “That line gets more potent every day. And the more these things happen, the more necessary it is to tell the story.”
Within the 75-minute docudrama, Tanner embodies seven characters – from one of the school girls taken hostage, to the killer himself -- jumping back and forth from one to another in an ever changing time frame, to illuminate reactions and intentions from multiple perspectives.
“Imagine taking seven long aria arias and putting them in a food processor and reassembling them,” says Olson, who also directed Tanner in the same show in Oklahoma in April and in Maryland last month. “She ends up changing character about 140 times and it’s all on the fly. It’s quite a magic act she does.”
Tanner, who has now performed the role more than any other actor (and more than any other role in her career), admits she has to be “on top of my game” to deliver the play’s powerful message.
“You become like an athletic angel,” Tanner says. “I have to train for it, vocally, emotionally, the whole package. The best way I can describe it is, if you remember how when you were a kid and your ran around and around your yard playing and then your mom called you in and you were totally tired, but you couldn’t wait to get out there again. You’re so immersed you’re not thinking of anything else.”
She says if she could only do one play for the rest of her life, this might be the one.
Todd Olson, who direct's the Banyan Theater's of "The Amish Project" has done several productions of the one-woman play with Sarasota's Katherine Michelle Tanner. / Photo courtesy American Stage Theatre Company
“It’s not just a play about a school shooting,” she says. “It really allows a public format for art and community to come together and more than ever, I think we need that. It’s been called the modern day ‘Our Town,’ and I think that’s accurate. That we can still find community in the height of these tragic events. If we can do that without making a political statement, I feel I’ve done my job.”
Each place where she has presented the play has provided a different situation and a different audience. In Oklahoma, it was performed in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah federal building and held in an old Works Progress building just blocks from the bombing site, where a cracked mirror in the lobby still stood as an enduring reminder. In Maryland, performances took place in a rustic pre-Civil War carriage house that now serves as a church, where the audience was seated close enough for Tanner to touch the first row.
Not only have the venues changed, so has the actor. Between first performance and now, Tanner, who plays the young girl, Anna, and Anna’s father in the production, lost her own father, which deepened the bond she presents between the two characters in the play. And working with Olson through three productions has amplified their relationship and trust.
“I’m a little older and a little wiser,” she says. “And Todd and my relationship has evolved to such a beautiful place that feel free to take some new risks and try some new things.”
In each setting, Tanner captured video of her performance, as well as some of the talk-back sessions with audience members. It is her “deepest wish” she says, to produce a documentary on her entire experience, one that might help spread the power of the play’s message to a larger audience.
Olson says he is in talks with several venues outside Florida to bring the production elsewhere. While while both he and Tanner welcome the idea of a continued association with each other and the play, they would also welcome the idea of there being no need for repetition.
Tanner plays facets of seven different characters in Jessica Dickey's "The Amish Project." / Photo by Chad Jacob courtesy of American Stage Theatre Company
“I don’t really believe in theater as therapy,” Olson says, “but I do think that every now and then you can have a play that’s really powerful because of the moment, that holds a mirror up to nature, a story that absolutely reflects the world in which we live. I think this is absolutely that play for now.
“It would be nice if it wasn’t that play, if we could look at it and say, ‘Oh, that’s dated.’ But until then, as long as we can tell this story, we should.”
THEATER PREVIEW
“The Amish Project,” written by Jessica Dickey, featuring Katherine Michelle Tanner. Banyan Theater Company at the Cook Theatre, FSU Center for Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail. July 18 through August 1. $8-$28.50. 351-2808; www.banyantheatercompany.com.
