Princeton senior Caitlin Durkin, who will portray six characters in Jessica Dickey’s compelling drama, “The Amish Project.” Photo by Jon Sweeney
(PRINCETON, NJ) — The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater and Music Theater at Princeton University presents The Amish Project, Jessica Dickey’s compelling drama that explores the aftermath of the 2006 shooting at an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, a small village in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Princeton senior Caitlin Durkin directs and portrays six characters forever transformed by the tragic event. Performances are on December 6-7, 2024 at 7:30pm in the Wallace Theater at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus.
Free and open to the public, tickets can be reserved through University Ticketing. The Wallace Theater is fully accessible with an assistive listening system. The December 7 performance will be open captioned. Guests in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
Dickey’s play, which premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival on August 8, 2008, at the Players Loft, is a fictional exploration of the Nickel Mines schoolhouse shooting in an Amish community and the path of forgiveness and compassion forged in its wake.
On October 2, 2006, gunman Charles Roberts, 32, a non-Amish local resident invaded the one-room schoolhouse deep in Pennsylvania Amish country and eventually tied up and shot 10 Amish girls, five of whom died. Within hours, the local Amish community announced they had forgiven him, the shooting and response sending shockwaves around the world.
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The production includes references to gun violence and ideations of sexual assault.
The six characters Durkin will portray are Anna, a 14-year-old victim of the shooting; Carol Stuckey, widow of the gunman; Velda, a 6-year-old victim; Bill North, scholar and professor on Amish culture and spokesperson for the Amish families; gunman Eddie Stuckey, who shot himself at the end of the attack; and non-Amish resident Sherry Local. A seventh character in the play, America, a 16-year-old, pregnant grocery clerk, is being portrayed by first-year student Sofia Clark.
Durkin, a sociology major from Santa Monica, California, proposed the project as her independent work toward a minor in the Program in Theater and Music Theater, seeking a substantial acting and directing challenge. Students earning a minor take the course “Introduction to Theater Making,” four other theater, music theater, music, or dance courses, and provide non-performing support for one or two other program productions, with the option to propose a senior project in spring of their junior year. The program’s season is primarily shaped by the interests and proposals of the students pursuing the minor. Students’ senior projects are advised by the faculty with support from the professional staff in music, costumes, scenery, light, sound, stage management and producing. Any student can pursue the minor; no application or audition is required, and students with no prior experience are welcome.
Durkin has been involved in other Program in Theater and Music Theater projects. She played Gertrude in Hamlet in 2022 and originated the role of Buddy in Not Your Buddy in 2023. She also served as an assistant stage manager for the program’s massive production last fall of The Winter’s Tale. Durkin also performed as Nora in Theater Intime’s production of A Doll’s House in 2022 and is a member of the student group Fuzzy Dice Improv. Acting since the age of five, Durkin grew up studying and performing Shakespeare at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Los Angeles, where she was a mainstage repertory company member for five years.
E. Keating Helfrich Debalak is the professional costume designer on the production. Students in production roles include Kat McLaughlin as lighting designer, John Wallar as sound designer, Avi Chesler as stage manager, and Roya Reese as assistant stage manager. The faculty producer is Tess James and faculty mentor on the project is Vivia Font.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Program in Theater and Music Theater, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
