A community carried by one performer
The Broadhurst Theatre’s production of The Amish Project, beginning performances on February 10, 2027, places Jonathan Groff alone onstage. Sarna Lapine is the announced director of Jessica Dickey’s solo play. A community’s experience of loss is entrusted to one performer. Groff grew up near Lancaster, giving him a personal connection to the story, but the announced form is defined first by the solo cast: one actor must carry the community into the room.[1]
That choice separates telling a community’s story from assembling a community of bodies onstage. An ensemble can occupy different positions simultaneously; a solo play must establish its distinctions within one performer’s body and time. I read The Amish Project as a problem of distributing attention through the actor towards other people, rather than simply concentrating attention on a star. A commercial reading remains possible: Groff’s name may be the principal attraction bringing an established text to Broadway.[1]
Lapine describes Dickey’s writing as lean and strong, opening onto a community in mourning and conversation. Combined with a solo cast, that description raises the question of how the other side of a conversation can remain present. The performer may be alone without the world of the play shrinking to his individual emotion. The theatrical tension lies between a strong central presence and the community’s differing experiences. That is a tension within the announced form, rather than a judgment on a performance yet to take place.[1]
An established play reaches another house
The Amish Project did not begin on Broadway. It debuted at the New York International Fringe Festival, developed at Cherry Lane and reached Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2009. Later productions included the Guthrie in Minneapolis, Milwaukee Rep, American Theater Company in Chicago and City Theatre in Pittsburgh. The Broadhurst is another house in that history. The new event is the meeting of Dickey’s established text, Groff’s solo casting and Lapine’s direction in this particular theatre.[1]
Groff’s recent portrayal of Bobby Darin in Just in Time provides a useful boundary for comparison. This production is announced as a solo play carrying a community, rather than a musical organised around embodying another individual’s life. Success in that earlier role cannot settle the outcome of this different assignment. The same actor does not guarantee the same relationship with an audience. The question here is how much room a recognisable performer can make for the people whose story he carries.[1]
The design team has not yet been announced, so this relationship cannot be assigned to a particular set or lighting scheme. For now, the tangible stage arrangement is a named play, one performer, a director and the February 10 start. The promise of a solo play extends beyond enlarging an actor’s presence: other lives must acquire weight without other bodies sharing the stage. At the Broadhurst, the production’s task is to move that weight from Groff’s personal connection into the audience’s shared attention.[1]