“THE BELLE OF AMHERST is a love affair with language, a celebration of all that is beautiful and poignant in life,” says the writer, William Luce.  The play tells the story of Emily Dickinson, the nineteenth century American poet whose work and talents were never recognized while she was living.  In an intimate setting, through dialogue with the audience and re-enactments of interactions with 15 different “characters” from the poet’s past, we learn what made her “tick”, what inspired her poetry, and the inner workings of her mind and heart.

In a way, this play is a fantasy because the real-life Emily says of herself:

However, though in life she was reserved and reclusive even among her own family members, her inner life was never quiet.  The artist inside was always eager to share,  admire, express, and inspire.  So that is the Emily we meet in this play; alive with noise, and humor, and constant dialogue with nature and with her own spirituality.  It is not the Emily one might have met in 1860 on a New England street, but the soul of Emily, the message of Emily's art which speaks to us directly here.  If her heart could talk, it might very well sound like this play, “this enterprise of simple beauty!”