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The Amish Project views the shooting of 10 school girls in Nickel Mines, PA through the eyes of seven characters, but the focus seems to be on providing playwright and performer Jessica Dickey with an interesting array of people and accents to play, rather than scrutinizing the tragedy.

Directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde, Dickey effectively toggles between a troublemaking housewife, a Hispanic teenager, an Amish scholar, two of the school girls, the shooter’s widow and the killer himself, embodying their accompanying accents and emotions. The first two personae are from Dickey’s imagination; the others are fictionalized versions of the real people, scripted without benefit of personal interviews, Dickey says in her program notes.

While the performance is strong, the play, with its disjointed timeframe and unsure purpose, leaves us unsatisfied and asking questions: What prompted the killer’s actions? How were the girls’ parents able to forgive? How are the families faring now?

Maybe a dramatic work gleaned from the real experiences of those involved rather than a unilateral “project” would have offered some answers.

---- Lauren Yarger

Presented by Nora Productions as part of The New York International Fringe Festival at THE PLAYERS LOFT, 115 MACDOUGAL ST., NYC. [remaining performance Aug. 22 9:15p.m.]
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