The last time we saw actress Christin Goff at Warren's 2nd Story Theatre was back in the winter of 2007, when she played the title role in George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara." Now she's back with an even bigger challenge, a one-woman show about poet Emily Dickinson that keeps her on stage without a net for about 90 minutes.

The play in question is William Luce's "The Belle of Amherst," which offers a glimpse into the sheltered life of the reclusive 19th-century poet. It will take place at the Bristol Statehouse on High Street, where 2nd Story has put on several plays. The show is a benefit to raise money for an air-conditioning system that is being installed in the theater's home on Market Street in Warren.

Goff said she has been working on memorizing her lines since January.

"It's definitely a challenge," said Goff, mother of four children ranging in age from 19 to 4. "But I love a challenge."

Told in two acts, the play draws largely upon Dickinson's poetry and letters. In the play, Dickinson, who wrote more than 1,000 poems, is a childlike 53-year-old who welcomes the audience to her Amherst, Mass. home with a recipe for her special black cake. She introduces herself as a poet, and reveals that her neighbors refer to her as "Squire Edward's half-cracked daughter." Dickinson confides it's all an act.

According to Dickinson, her quirky behavior - running from townsfolk, sending odd notes, and surprising would-be sightseers - is just a way of enjoying her "menagerie," as she refers to the people of Amherst.

As the play unfolds, Dickinson talks about her family and the people who have influenced her life.

Goff, who got her start acting with Bob Colonna's Rhode Island Shakespeare Theatre in Newport, called Luce's play a spoken diary that "provides an interior landscape" of Dickinson, how she became a "semi-ignored recluse." She said the play is "passionate, wild and sensitive."

Goff has not been entirely idle for the past three years since "Major Barbara." She stepped in at the last minute to play Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" for the Academy Players in East Greenwich. The part was a "stretch" for her, but she loved doing it. She also escaped "Mommyville" for a few weeks a couple of years ago to take acting classes in New York.

"That really helped sharpen my skills," she said.

For the show, 2nd Story has brought in Pat Hegnauer to direct. She was the cofounder of 2nd Story years ago, when it was located over a restaurant on the Newport waterfront. The Bristol Statehouse has been transformed into Dickinson's home. It's very Victorian, said Goff, right down to the teapot and doilies.

"It's a joy to go in there," she said.

Goff, who lives in Cranston, said the play "really speaks to the heart of what people experience." She said it's about our "basic humaneness."

She also thinks the underlying message is "always be true to your inner voice," something Dickinson stuck to, despite not having her poems published, despite failed romantic entanglements.

In the end, Dickinson invites the audience back to visit and let her know how they liked her cake recipe.

Warren's 2nd Story Theatre has moved to temporary digs in the Bristol Statehouse, where it is putting on a splendid production of "The Belle of Amherst," William Luce's one-woman show about the life and times of eccentric 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson. Christin Goff stars, and she is terrific, giving one of the more compelling performances of the season.

Goff, last seen at 2nd Story three years ago in the title role in "Major Barbara," is on stage for close to 90 minutes, with precious few props and nothing but raw talent to keep her on track. She shares recipes, reads poems and tells of her reclusive life among her "menagerie," as she calls the townsfolk. It's a remarkable performance, with tight direction from Pat Hegnauer, co-founder of 2nd Story in the days when it was located over a bar on the Newport waterfront.

Hegnauer keeps things fluid so the action never drags. But Goff is also mercurial, changing moods from line to line. She also has one of those great theater faces, one that can say so much with just a smile or a glance.

The play opens with 53-year-old Emily coming into the room and being surprised by the audience. She's a woman of letters, and is otherwise shy and a bit awkward around people.

She hands out squares of her special black cake that she has baked, then rattles off the recipe. She admits that the villagers like to refer to her as "Squire Dickinson's half-cracked daughter." That's because she wears only white, runs from people and passes oddball notes to her neighbors. But, she confesses, it's all just an act to pass the time.

Goff's Emily is at once child-like and sage-like. Her writing can be flip, but also touch some of our most tender emotions. There is a beautiful moment when Goff tells about a youthful crush, and how she spoke to the man only twice, 20 years apart. And there are other failed romantic entanglements, including unclear feelings toward her sister-in-law.

Goff soon takes us back to when Emily was 15, when she was a typical teen fond of dances and parties. She spent a year at Mt. Holyoke, then retired to her parents' Amherst home to write. More than 1,700 poems were found in her room when she died in 1886 at the age of 55.

Despite her sheltered life, she can't escape hardship, can't escape the death of her parents and her young nephew.

Her one obsession was to have her work published under her own name. For 8 years, she carried on correspondence with a Professor Higginson from "Atlantic Monthly," with hopes that he would publish her work. But the relationship never went anywhere and Emily seems somewhat broken after that, not writing as much as she had in the past.

Goff is marvelous here, as she spits out tongue-twisting lines to an invisible Higginson, nervously rattling off her concerns.

The courtroom where all of this takes place, has been festooned with banners on which are scribbled lines from Dickinson's poems and the recipe for that black cake of hers. Throughout the show, Goff saunters about the space, stopping to talk to audience members.

As one-actor shows go "The Belle of Amherst" is not nearly as quirky as "I Am My Own Wife," which 2nd Story staged not so long ago. It's a demure, sweet show, held together by a riveting performance from Goff.

Cranston actress Christin Goff gives a shining performance as poet Emily Dickinson in the one-person production of William Luce's "The Belle of Amherst," brilliantly directed by Pat Hegnauer.

The play is being produced by 2nd Story Theatre to raise funds for air-conditioning their Warren theatre, hopefully in time for their summer season.

2nd Story returns to the Bristol Statehouse, at 240 High St. in the center of Bristol, a perfect setting for the play, which allows the audience to see and hear the poet unveil her past and present through a smooth flow of remembrances that are interwoven with her actual poems.

Christin Goff has captured the heart and soul of Emily Dickinson, happy and spontaneous at one moment, pensive and sad at another. She floats around the room, stopping to look out windows at a parade passing by and people hoping for a glimpse of the recluse.

The play opens with Emily sharing her recipe for black cake with the audience, and then recalling her unusual life from ages 15 to 56.

Having studied Dickinson's poetry in college, there were moments when I could recall some of the lines of this great poet who by today's terms, "thought outside the box."

Eileen Warburton's excellent essay (get there a few minutes early and read it) gives us a little background into Dickinson, including the fact that following her death in 1886 her family found 1,775 poems, mostly written on scraps of paper.

Wearing a white dress, with her hair in a bun, Goff looks like Dickinson, and surely acts the way the poet probably would have acted. It is a memorable performance, which earned her a sincere, lengthy standing ovation.

"Words are my life," she says, and her words flow like a fresh mountain stream as she talks directly to the audience and to her imaginary family, friends, and suitors. Emily never married, choosing to remain in her Amherst home with her dominating father, emotionally absent mother, and siblings.

She was well aware of the stories told about her. Rejecting religion, while also rejecting suitors, Emily remained in her own little world, "transferring my feelings into poetry."

By the end of the hour-and-a-half play, with a brief intermission, you will know quite a bit about Emily Dickinson. More important, Christin Goff will make you feel for her through her stories and her beautiful poetry.

Between the deep-rooted American penchant for individualism and the suffragette and feminist movements, poet Emily Dickinson was bound to enter the literary canon. William Luce's The Belle of Amherst, at 2nd Story Theatre through June 27, makes a vivid and convincing case for why we should be glad of that fact.

The engaging production is taking place at the historical statehouse in Bristol as a fundraiser to pay for air conditioning at the Warren theater.

A one-woman show, the monologue is delivered by Christin Goff and directed by Pat Hegnauer. Dickinson steps out in period garb, her hair in a bun, addressing us nervously as though we are unexpected guests. The performance space looks much like a courtroom, which is appropriate to the misunderstood poet, who had reason to worry about her unconventional poetry being judged.

Famous as a shy eccentric in her little Massachusetts town, she describes herself in the town's terms as "Squire Dickinson's half-cracked daughter." She tells how in school she refused to scratch out the naughty bits in her Shakespeare textbook, as the teacher had instructed the class, and she exuberantly reads to us a string of bawdy quotes, culminating in "let copulation thrive!" Not yet a recluse in her early years, she would include inscrutable notes with cakes she would send to neighbors, inviting them to compare to see who had the oddest one.

The intensity with which Dickinson regarded poetry, if not life, was famously expressed: "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." With that attitude, she knew that restraint was necessary to keep her poems from coming across like adolescent gushings. A poet must tell the truth but "tell it slant," as she observes in one poem, presented here as though Dickinson is making a spontaneous observation. "The Truth must dazzle gradually. Or every man be blind," she writes about limiting the exploding heads among her readership.

"Father's house and my garden, this is my world," she says, adding, "my paradise." Of which she notes: "Paradise is no journey, because it is within." Her father was gruff and normally unexpressive, but he was nevertheless a person who once ran to the church to ring the bell to alert the town to an aurora borealis display. When she was still a girl and he read her poetry, he unexpectedly allowed her to stay up late to write.

Dickinson, who died in 1886 at 55, gained a prominent lifelong mentor at 32 when she began corresponding with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an Atlantic Monthly editor. He was supportive but somewhat baffled by the radical style of her breathless poetry, less critical of her in real life than in this play. They met face-to-face only twice; for dramatic purposes, playwright Luce has her shaken and traumatized by their first visit, which opens Act Two, when he calls her poems "spasmodic" and her rhymes "unruly."

This unique poetic genius was so self-conscious about being judged, having had less than a dozen poems published over the years - of more than a thousand - that late in life she refused help to get a collection published. Most of her poems remain unread until after her death, when her sister discovered a huge cache under her bed. Higginson had them published four years later. As Dickinson wrote, those poems were "like an undelivered letter lost in transit."

There are two aspects of this presentation, fine-tuned by Hegnauer, that make this production such a moving experience. First is how Goff presents Dickinson's enthusiasm as coming from a loving source, both from the delight of her inspirations and from the joy of successfully communicating what is heartfelt. We, the audience, come to be her ideal understanding readers. Secondly, Goff gradually brings more and more feeling and passion to the telling, until by the end she is consumed by emotion, which comes across as revealing rather than excessive.

Goff, who previously appeared at 2nd Story in the title role of Major Barbara, certainly holds the stage firmly for these two hours. This presentation of The Belle of Amherst is a profound delight.

Anyone familiar wiith Emily Dickinson will be intrigued by 2nd Story Theatre's production of "The Belle of Amherst," playwright William Luce's Tony Award-winning, one-woman show about the poet.

People who are unfamilar with Dickinson will become fascinated after seeing Christin Goff'sportrayal of the idiosyncratic writer who lived and wrote about a world of emotions and experiences fropm the confines of 1800s Amherst, Mass.

For people in either camp, Luce's play provides enough background on Dickinson to explain both her talent and her reputation, and Goff's performance is like meeting the character face to face.

In the play, Dickinson acknowledges that she was known as "Squire Edward's half-cracked daughter." The Squire was her father, a lawyer and legislator instrumental in founding Amherst College.

His middle child, Emily, was recognized as brilliant from childhoos, but in 19th century New England, there weren't many roles outside the home for a woman. Such restrictions probably played a role but weren't the only factor in Dickinson's gradual withdrawal from society.

After a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, she returned home and never left. "I don't cross my father's ground," she wrote. She was close with her family, particularly siblings Austin and Lavinia, siblings Austin and Lavinia, but she communicated with virtually everyone else through correspondence. Whenpeople cameto her home, she reportedly fled to her room or spoke frombehind a partly opened door

But her isolation gave her opportunity to write, unfettered by expectations. A few of her poems were published - anonymously-during her lifetime, butafter she died in 1886 at the age of 55, her family found a box containing 1,775 poems, somebound into booklets and others on scraps of paper.

Unlike the structured, rhyming poems of the era, Dickinson's work was more like conversation, a style which playwright Luce uses to advantage in "Belle of Amherst," weaving quotes from Dickinson's poems into the dalogue.

Goff and Director Pat Hegnauer makeit workseamlessly so that only familiarity or careful listening distinguish Dickinson's poetry from Luce's lines.

What turns this biography intotheater, however, is a combination of Luce's dramatic unfolding of thehighsandlows in Dickinson's life, and the life Goff brings to her performance.

In the former case, Luce picks events that offer insight on the reclusive Dickinson, from her/his explanation ofher behavior - "I enjoy the game. I do it on purpose"-to her loving relationships with herfamily and with suitors, of which she had several but never consummated.

For her part, Goff is immersed in her character. She revels in happy moments and moves us with her emotion during sad ones. She is believable in creating Dickinson's innate intelligence; despite some odd behavior, she comes across as logical in her own across as logical in her own "half-cracked."

2ndStory and Hegnauer are producing the show at the Bristol Statehouse, constructed in 1816 and used as one of five locations for meetings of the General Assembly until 1854, when meetings were consolidated to Providence or Newport.

The building, restored by the Bristol Statehouse Foundation, gives an intrinsically historic feel to the production, and Hegnauer takes advantage of the setting, from the windows through which Dickinson peers at her neighbors to doorways that, for the sake of the play, lead to other parts of the Dickinson house.

Just one quibble: Cloths draped over railings that frame theperformance space unnecessarily obscure some of Goff's small actions, like pouring tea.

Andaword of advice: the pew seats in the historic buildingarelikesome of our forefathers: upright. Chairs left and right of the "stage"look more comfortable, but the pews beg for a back pillow; think about taking one.

Don't think twice, however, about seeing this production. It'senlightening, historic, poetic, andmostwonderfully, turns aniconic poet into a real person.

Throughout June, literary legend Emily Dickinson will be gracing the confines of the historic Bristol State House. The event is 2nd Story Theatre's production of "The Belle of Amherst," a one-woman show about the private life of the beloved poet, which is running at the former courthouse in a special engagement through June 27.

The production is to benefit 2nd Story Theatre's "Cool Campaign" which will bring much-needed air conditioners to the company's Warren theater. And while 2nd Story patrons this summer will enjoy the fresh breeze of "Belle's" air (not to mention having the noise of all those motorcycles muffled), that's certainly not the only reason to attend.

Much like Emily Dickinson herself, the play "The Belle of Amherst" is at once intimate and transcendent and creates in the audience's mind, as great poetry is wont to do, an ineffable sense of thrilling wonder. Dickinson dwelt in and dealt with the life of the mind and for her the brain itself was "wider than the sky, deeper than the sea" and "just the weight of God." Those fortunate enough to be present in Emily's own select society during this show cannot help but to be pulled in to her own beautiful and poetic world view.

Emily Dickinson is played here by Christin Goff, a lovely and effervescent actress whom theatergoers will remember as playing, with great grace, the title role in Shaw's "Major Barbara" a few years back at 2nd Story. The director for "Belle" is the wonderful Pat Hegnauer, a treasure of the Rhode Island theater scene who, in 1978, co-founded 2nd Story Theatre and as artistic director for over 25 years produced or directed more than 200 plays.

Though she now looms large in American letters, Dickinson had, in her lifetime, only a scant seven poems published anonymously. She choose to dwell apart from society, was considered by her local contemporaries to be an eccentric recluse and yet her poetry manifests itself in a rich and lovingly exact vision of the world. That Dickinson "dwells in possibility" makes her exquisite writing a natural fit for the stage which, by its own nature, creates an ineffable bit of transcendence with each live performance and, where, on a given night, anything can happen.

What strikes me about the play and Dickinson's poetry is that it is gentle and direct at the same time. I asked Pat Hegnauer if this introspection provided by Dickinson's own candid heart accounts for the show's enormous appeal.

"I believe we're fascinated by artists who live differently from us and yet share the same emotions," she said. "The dedication we observe in writers, composers, painters and dancers - their one-track minds - is foreign and fascinating to those who appreciate the arts but don't know it as the axis of their very being. To observe a writer like Emily wanting to be discovered and recognized is to watch her share the same angst we all feel about wanting to be accepted and valued. Emily's poetry is salve on our own wounds."

There is an utter stillness and intimacy to Dickinson's poetry. How difficult is it to make such a private life and intimate words accessible to an audience? The answer lies in the structure of William Luce's play.

"The play's premise is that Emily has been awaiting us," Ms. Hegnauer said, referring to the poet's vast audience of the future, "and is eager to serve us tea and cake and tell us of her life. The play is a way of setting the record straight and counteracting the small town gossip about her bizarre habits. Emily, who after decades of living apart and needing to be heard, wants us to read and love her poetry."

Dickinson wrote "Much madness is divinest sense-/to a discerning eye-/much sense-the starkest madness," and Luce has said his play is a means for the poet to say, "pardon my sanity." Or, pardon my ecstasy in the everyday world that you discount, my jubilation in nature, my childlike wonder in love. It is a lesson in life, and in truth, that, to paraphrase the poet, "dazzles gradually."

"I like that quote," says our own Emily, Christin Goff. "The play tends to unfold and invite you in rather than dictate and Pat Hegnauer directs it that way. She really has created an experience that remains true to the poet's voice. Emily wrestles with big ideas - love, time and death - and she is unafraid of her voice in writing even as she was shy to point of reclusion."

"I love the language of her poems - her quirky humor, her musings about death and eternity, her astounding depths," said Ms. Hegnauer. "And I want the audience to see her more as a person than a legend. We're striving to create an experience that will renew passion and will make you leave wanting to read, or re-read, her poetry."

To spend an evening with Emily Dickinson, as you have a chance to do through June, is to renew your sense of wonder in the world. The poet had good advice for critics, too: "Tell the truth but tell it slant/success in circuit lies." Here's hoping that 2nd Story's special production of "The Belle of Amherst" finds success on the summer circuit.

ARTSMASH: You will be staging this play at the old [1816] Statehouse in Bristol, but this is not the first time you've created work there. So what challenges and what delights does that venue bring to this one-woman show?

HEGNAUER: This is the second play I've directed at the Bristol Statehouse. The space is very pleasing to me, and I easily work around any obstacles, [such as] that it has a courtroom. I've worked in many spaces in my career as director and have learned to adjust and take advantage of a room's best qualities. It's all good, especially with Christin Goff's talent that consistently fills every nook and cranny of the room with a fabulous theatrical energy.

ARTSMASH: How important is it to recreate that sense of place or Emily's historical look?

HEGNAUER: I'm less interested in the historical look of Emily's home than the emotional aspect of her being. If Emily were here, today, she'd be just as private, just as vulnerable, just as much a reclusive writer as she was in her own time. I know many artists who live apart from the throng and communicate mainly to their muse. One needs to spend time journeying into one's soul to create; hard to do with our inordinately busy lives. An artist has to isolate themselves.

ARTSMASH: What do you feel are Dickenson's emotional strengths, idiosyncrasies, failings as a person (or character) and how do you manage or balance these throughout the show?

HEGNAUER: My job as a director is to explore Emily's life and work without judging her. I accept her foibles and love her poetry and believe that her life was lived exactly the way it should have been. What we think is normal is often a hindrance for the creative soul. And most artists are never "normal."

ARTSMASH: It's a very long monologue for one actress. What do you see, or what have you and the actress come to see, as the key to managing this?

HEGNAUER: Emily talks to others; she remembers and sees, has conversations that we accept as scenes. And she talks to us, the audience, because we are the guests in her home. And so, we become cast members. Actors learn lines well if they know what the events are. Each moment in the play is part of an event, and events are the guideposts on a roadmap for an actor. And the events are all different. There is a big difference between her sharing her recipe for Black Cake and sharing her lonely years of love for a married man.

ARTSMASH: What guiding principles do you use in approaching the challenges of pacing and staging this monologue?

HEGNAUER: The pacing of a play is based on the emotional content. When we're happy or elated we're up and energetic; when sad, we're slow, frightened; we run or freeze; undecided, we hesitate. The tempo of a play is in the actions and emotion. And of course the style. Belle of Amherst is a lyrical journey into Emily Dickenson's world and the momentous experiences that birthed her poems.

ARTSMASH: Do you have a favorite biography of Dickenson?

HEGNAUER: My favorite biography of Emily Dickinson is, in fact, in her poetry, and the live performance of the Belle of Amherst. Being in a room with Emily and having her tell her life and poems to me is totally thrilling.