‘The Amish Project’, directed by Murray Chase, features young actors.
By Ramon Lopez
Original Air Date: December 3, 2025
Host: WSLR reporter Ramon Lopez took a close look at an unusual theater production. It’s about a school shooting, and some of the actors are actual students.
Ramon Lopez: Venice Theatre’s reconstruction from 2022’s Category 5 Hurricane Ian continues, hopefully leading to a full theater restoration in 2026.
Zach Tudor plays eddie stuckey, the gunman of 2006 Amish schoolhouse shooting in Nickel Mines, PA. Megan Hendrick is his wife, Carol Stuckey. Photos by Ramon Lopez
While the $25 million rebuilding project continues, the mostly unscathed 90-seat Pinkerton Theatre continues to provide patrons with live theatre productions.
Currently running there is The Amish Project. It portrays the aftermath of the October 2, 2006 slaughter of children at a school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. The gunman shot 10 female students, killing five instantly. A sixth would die years later as a result of the shooting. The gunman killed himself that day, leaving a wife and children.
The massacre is not the message of the play. It instead dwells on the aftermath. The local Amish community forgave the mass murderer and took care of his widow and children. The dramatic play is a fictional exploration of the actual events.
Murray Chase directed Jessica Dickey’s Amish Project with young local actors portraying the slaughtered school kids. It’s a one-act play.
Murray Chase
Murray Chase: That’s 70 minutes. No intermission. There’s no place to stop the show. Again, it’s only 70 minutes long. There are things that we encounter, and I think we need to look at the reasons—how they affect us. It’s a strong play about a tough thing, but they need to be looked at. Think about it. Almost every day in our world—in our country, not our world—in our country—there are children killed in school. Are we just looking the other way? Are we okay with that? Are we willing to look at it and go, “This should not happen.” Parents today dropping their kids off at school have to wonder if they’re going to see their kids again.
RL: The young cast members include Olivia Albury, a sixth grader at Pine View School, and Fiona Villaba, a sophomore at Venice High. They handled the challenge deftly.
Chase looked for certain qualities during the auditions.
MC: It’s a difficult thing. We actually set out to—we had to assure everybody, especially the parents of the young people, that we would have folks able to comfort them, to take care of them backstage if they needed it. We found out that the young people were more adjusted to it than the adults were.
Fiona Villalba as 16-year-old America, a local grocery store worker.
RL: As the play’s director, Chase had to employ special handling as regards the young actors because of the subject matter.
MC: We were prepared to do that and found out we didn’t have to. We had people on standby to do that, and we ended up not having to do that because those young people handle it better than the adults do, because that’s their reality now. They live with it every day. To them, it’s not new.
RL: Small children are not permitted into the play. Pre-teens must be accompanied by a parent or guardian, again, because of the subject matter.
MC: I just think it’s smart to make sure that the parents know and that they give their permission for their children to be exposed to that. I believe parents should play a strong role in that. “My kids should watch this. My kids should not.” I want parents to think carefully about whether or not their kids need to see this or can see this without trauma.
Elaina Albury plays Anna, Zach Tudor is Eddie Stuckey, Sophia Christeas is Velda.
RL: Olivia Albury said she had no reservations about being in this dark play.
Olivia Albury: I would say it does definitely deal with some darker topics. It was extremely fun to work with the cast, though, and being in this play definitely helps build awareness about what happens. It was definitely a learning experience. I really wanted to handle this role with respect because the people, they lived through this.
RL: Fiona Villaba really wanted to be in this play.
Fiona Villaba: I was really excited to try out for this play, because I see a lot of the things that happen around with school shootings every day, and I just think it’s ridiculous to not do anything about it even though there’s so many ways that you could fix this problem. I was excited to tell a story saying, “This isn’t okay, and this affects a lot of people.”
RL: There’s still time to see The Amish Project, which runs through December 7.
This is Ramon Lopez for WSLR News.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.