The Amish Project is a play that faces big questions head on, including how do you forgive the murder of five innocent little girls?
The play is based on the tragic events of Oct. 2, 2006 when a gunman entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and shot 10 young girls, killing five of them.
Later the Amish people of that community publicly forgave the gunman in a service of reconciliation. Eventually, the West Nickel Mines schoolhouse was torn down and the New Hope School was built at another location.
Few in the audience were unmoved at the end of Assertions, a song, dance and theatre performance about bullying.
The Thursday night performance took place at the Performing Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, and was a collaborative effort among Island schools — both the regional high school and the charter school — IMP Improv for kids, YMCA dancers, Joanne Cassidy and other musical guests.
The Vineyard Playhouse hopes to raise $1 million this summer in the first phase of a $5 million capital campaign that encompasses the renovation, restoration and expansion of the historic theatre on Church street in Vineyard Haven.
The restoration already has begun. With Community Preservation Act funds and private donations, the playhouse has installed new wood clapboard siding and windows on three sides of the building, and a new fire-safety sprinkler system.
Barbara Reynolds took out an old photo album in a resource room at the Edgartown School last week, the pages tinted with age but the memories still fresh as though her students were sitting next to her at the table.
James Joyce Returns to the Stage
“One by one we’re all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”
The Vineyard Playhouse’s current production of Tape, opens on a set that itself poses a plot twist and a conundrum at the same time: Lights bear down on a typical off-highway motel room with twin beds, a banal color scheme of beige, gold and brown, a sink on one side rimmed by overhead white globes. Over in the right-hand corner, a vague charcoal-hued stain hints that a repaint of the unadorned walls is long overdue.
It’s a three-person play and a two-bed motel room. Something’s already intriguingly off-kilter.