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.

The Amish Project is a one-woman show based on these events and written by Jessica Dickey. The show presents seven different characters who grapple with the events of that day, the ramifications and the complex nature of forgiveness. The actor is Taffy McCarthy, and she has teamed up with director Kaf Warman, her longtime collaborator and friend.

While the characters in the play are fictionalized (the writer did not want to presume to understand what the real-life people went through) the emotions ring true. Ms. Warman first saw the show in Pittsburgh, where she works. The play had already received critical acclaim in New York city both for Ms. Dickey’s original performance as well as her script.

“It’s very rare that I direct anything that I have seen,” said Ms. Warman. “I’ve only done so once before in my whole career, but I did really love it.” She and Ms. McCarthy spent the five weeks prior to their opening last Thursday working on the play for close to four hours a day, almost every day.

It is quite apparent watching the play that the arc of the story and each character within it have been carefully crafted. Ms. McCarthy makes the acting shifts from victim, to shooter, to a professor who addresses the media at a press conference with gestures both big and small; a simple hand in the pocket to a complete transformation of voice and body posture.

For Ms. McCarthy, the show was a challenge on many levels but she carries the show beautifully and brings the message of the show home. The idea of forgiveness and its explanation becomes clear only as more perspectives are explored. How one can or why one should forgive, in a situation as horrible as the one the play explores, requires various perspectives to be fully understood. The Amish view of the word “why” helps give insight into why they do forgive. As the play says, “The Amish don’t believe in a why.”

For the Amish the question of why the gunman did what he did is not even a part of the conversation and therefore cannot hang heavy on their minds and breed resentment.

“We are so invested in the why and being right and knowing and understanding,” said Ms. McCarthy.

The play also communicates how situations are bigger than the conclusions people sometimes jump to. For example, the character Eddie, who is the gunman, says that he can’t explain why he did what he did. “I’m bigger than why,” he concludes.

The device of having one actor play all seven roles helps communicate the interrelated nature of events in communities, and shows how there is a common experience among humans who may be as different as a man consumed with darkness and a little Amish girl thinking about boys for the first time. One of the characters in the play says “We’re all just a few days from Sicko,” which is the word used in the play to degrade the family of the shooter.

For Ms. Warman, the idea of community theater, which she holds dear, and the issues of community that the play raises were big factors in her desire to do this play on the Vineyard.

“I think this [play] speaks more to the year-round community than necessarily the summer community that might be looking for a different kind of entertainment,” said Ms. Warman. “And my personal commitment is still to the year-round community, even though I am back teaching.”

Ms. Warman has had a long history of directing shows on the Island throughout the year but she recently returned to teaching fulltime as an improvisation and movement teacher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

When Ms. Warman saw the show originally she knew she wanted to direct it on Martha’s Vineyard.

“I wanted to do it here, in this community, in my home community [which] I feel connected to with all those threads the way these characters feel connected,” she said. “It really had a place for me here. And I hope that the community will recognize that in coming out to see it.”

The Amish Project concludes its run at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven this weekend. The remaining shows are on July 1, 2 and 3 all at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 and available at the door or ticketsmv.com.