Jonathan Groff has played a rebellious adolescent, a sneering monarch, a striving composer and a celebrated crooner through two decades of standout musical theater performances on Broadway.
Now, even as he flexes with Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon (playing the female lead in “As You Like It”), he has signed on for his next Broadway show, and it’s a big pivot for him and his fans: He will play an entire community — adults and children, male and female — in a solo play exploring forgiveness after a school shooting.
The play, “The Amish Project,” will be Groff’s first nonmusical production on Broadway, and it’s strikingly personal for him: It’s a work of fiction inspired by a 2006 shooting at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, just a few minutes from Groff’s childhood home. The Amish community of Lancaster County, where the shooting took place, has strong ties to the Mennonite community, in which Groff’s father grew up, and Groff, who was raised Methodist, spent time with both Anabaptist communities.
Here’s what we know so far.
What is this play?
“The Amish Project” was written by Jessica Dickey, a Pennsylvania native who is an actress and a playwright. It was prompted by the West Nickel Mines School Shooting, in which a gunman shot 10 Amish schoolgirls, five of whom died at the time (a sixth died years later). The shooting drew national attention, not only for the horror and tragedy, but also because the Amish response focused on forgiveness.
Dickey wrote the play in her 20s and for a time performed it herself; it was first staged at a New York fringe festival in 2008, and it was further developed at the Cherry Lane Theater before getting an Off Broadway production in 2009 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, where a New York Times critic called it “a remarkable piece of writing.”
The play has been staged by several prominent regional theaters and multiple universities since then; although written for a solo female performer, it has been adapted for ensemble casts. Dickey said she believes that Groff will be the first male performer to do the show in a professional production. The characters include a gunman and some of his victims.
Who is involved?
Groff, 41, is the main event; he won a Tony Award in 2024 for a revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” and was nominated for “Spring Awakening,” “Hamilton” and “Just in Time.” He has worked extensively onscreen — he reached the widest audiences with a voice role, as Kristoff and Sven in the “Frozen” films, and starred in “Glee,” “Looking” and “Mindhunter.”
The production is being directed by Sarna Lapine, who also helmed a one-performer show on Broadway last year, “Call Me Izzy,” with Jean Smart. She previously directed a 2017 Broadway revival of “Sunday in the Park With George” that starred Jake Gyllenhaal. Lapine, who knew of Groff’s connection to Lancaster County and the Mennonite community, sent the script to him last year and persuaded him to take the role.
“A lot of stuff is getting to Broadway that might be less challenging — there’s this fear of challenging our audience,” Lapine said. “Jonathan is a theater artist through and through who happens to have a wonderfully high and accessible profile. He has the ability to bring something challenging and worthy and remarkable to the stage, and I think this work deserves that.”
The play is being produced by Robert Ahrens and Tom Kirdahy, who also produced Groff’s most recent Broadway venture, “Just in Time.”
When and where will it be?
The show is scheduled to begin previews on Feb. 10 at the Broadhurst Theater, which is set to have a holiday show, “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play,” from Nov. 4 to Jan. 3.
What does Groff have to say about this?
In a video interview from England, Groff recalled that he was living in New York and in rehearsals for “Spring Awakening” when the Nickel Mines shooting occurred. He knows the area well. He said that, as a child, he would pass through the community frequently on the way to his father’s horse farm, and once he got a driver’s license, he would occasionally give rides to Amish women he knew through his Mennonite grandmother, because the Amish don’t drive.
Groff said that the first time he picked up the “Amish Project” script, it hit him so hard he couldn’t finish it, but, once he did, he felt compelled to perform it.
“This play is not a documentary/true-crime expression of this tragedy that happened — it’s a work of art about the aftershocks of an unthinkable tragedy,” he said. “There’s something about the writing that gripped me by the throat and by the heart, and that level of urgency made me feel like I absolutely must do this.”
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