photo by: Mike Yoder

In a flashback scene, the character Rachel Watson, portrayed by Amber Dickinson, left, argues with her husband, Tom Watson, played by Christian Johanning, during a rehearsal of the play “The Girl On the Train” based on the bestselling novel by Paula Hawkins. Performances start Friday, April 22, 2022, at Theatre Lawrence.

Depicting a narrator’s inner life, especially when it’s warped by psychological abuse, alcoholism and other conditions that affect reliability, is challenging in a book — and even more so in a film. In a live stage play, it’s truly daunting.

That’s what Piet Knetsch discovered when he agreed to direct “The Girl on the Train” for Theatre Lawrence. The play, based on British author Paula Hawkins’ 2015 best-selling psychological thriller of the same name, is about a woman named Rachel who in the wake of a painful divorce and in the grip of alcoholism attempts to make sense of the lives that she observes through the train window on her daily commute. Through the haze of muddled memories, she tries to unravel a mysterious death, as well as her own past.

“I have to be quite candid and say I found it really difficult, initially, to read,” Knetsch says of the script. But when he did his “homework” and read the novel — he also gave a copy of Hawkins’ book to all seven cast members — he began to see how the dialogue that normally carries a stage play could be heavily complemented by technology to allow the audience inside Rachel’s head, which Knetsch describes as brimming with “flashbacks, memory lapses and so forth.”

photo by: Mike Yoder

Dan Heinz, playing the role of D.I. Gaskill, questions the character Rachel Watson, portrayed by Amber Dickinson, during a rehearsals of “The Girl On the Train” based on the bestselling novel by Paula Hawkins. Performances start Friday, April 22, 2022, at Theatre Lawrence.

“The way we are doing some of that is with wonderful technical elements that we’ve created — a whole bunch of very special projections, and even some projections that are video, that are being shown right on the set and sometimes even across the actors’ faces.”

Sound also plays a big role, Knetsch says. For example, the famous train of the title “is just all sound effects.”

“We have almost 300 cues in this, which is an enormous number of light and sound and projection cues that all have to be executed in the course of a two-act play,” Knetsch says. “It’s been a great challenge and we’ve had a lot of fun coming up with our solutions.”

He says it’s not a play that many community theaters would likely tackle.

“Trust me, I would say for lots of theaters, if you don’t have the technical capacity, you’d never be able to do this script; it would just be impossible,” he says.

By “technical capacity” he largely means the talents of James Diemer, Theatre Lawrence’s technical director. Diemer not only designed the set and lighting for this show, but he also created all the videos, photography and projections that are used in it.

He has come up with dozens of sophisticated sets over the years, but those have largely centered on physical action. This one was more like “staging a thought,” he says. And not only a thought, but the thought of a “horribly broken, unreliable narrator.”

“The action that we see on stage is Rachel’s physical journey, but the story itself is entirely in her mind. Everything that’s important has already happened (before the play begins),” Diemer says.

Diemer and Knetsch both say, however, that it’s the actor in the role, more than the technology, that breathes life into the dark thriller.

Rachel is played by theater veteran — and Washburn University political science professor — Amber Dickinson.

photo by: Mike Yoder

From left, actors Kelsey Nicholes, Mario Bonilla, Amber Dickinson and Shane St. James rehearse a scene from “The Girl On the Train,” based on the bestselling novel by Paula Hawkins. Performances start Friday, April 22, 2022, at Theatre Lawrence.

Knetsch notes that Dickinson is “in every single scene in the entire piece.”

“She never leaves the stage,” he says, an acting feat that Diemer describes as “running at 11 out of 10 the whole time,” especially given the psychological intensity of the role.

Dickinson acknowledges that it’s challenging, “but it’s nice because you never have the opportunity to get out of character; it forces you to stay in the moment.”

Like millions around the world, she had read the book when it first came out, so when she heard Theatre Lawrence was doing a stage production she was intrigued.

“I had no idea this was a thing,” she said of the play, which incorporates elements of both the book and the 2016 film starring Emily Blunt.

“I just wanted to see if I could do it,” she says. “I’m really hopeful that people will go into it with an open mind and will appreciate the artistry that James (Diemer) has put into making it the optical feast that it is.”

“The Girl on the Train” is scheduled to open Friday at Theatre Lawrence, 4660 Bauer Farm Drive, and will have multiple performances through May 1. For information about tickets, call 785-843-SHOW (7469) or go online at theatrelawrence.com. Proof of vaccination is required to attend all shows; masks are now optional.