When a loved one dies due to addiction, many people try to hide those details.

Donna Guerriero McAuley put it in the opening sentence of her daughter’s obituary — “Amanda Marie McAuley, 27, of Poland, passed away at her family home Wednesday morning, April 5, 2023, from street-laced fentanyl.”

Now she is putting that story on the Powers Auditorium stage in hopes that other families won’t have to experience the pain that her family has.

The woman who described herself as “not a play girl” created “Amanda — She Didn’t Mean to Die” and is funding a massive stage production with a cast of 50 performers, original songs, a $15,000 LED screen for the set and other expenses in hopes that it could become a touring stage show, a movie and/or a play staged by school theater groups nationwide.

The idea was borne out of the hopelessness she felt after her daughter’s death.

“I just knew I had to do something,” McAuley said. “I could not save Amanda for anything, and I would have done anything for that girl. We have to stop addiction before it starts. This is not OK that all these wonderful people are dying. My oldest daughter is struggling so bad, because she’s lost everybody. She actually has no friends left because of this drug.”

Amanda was a cheerleader and was on the swim team and tennis team in high school. She won the National American Miss Ohio Teen Top Model Contest when she was a senior in high school and then was crowned NAM Teen Top Model in the national competition. She signed with HRI Talent Agency and moved to Los Angeles.

None of those successes protected her from the lure of addition.

McAuley believes there are many contributing factors to the country’s addiction problems. She is worried that prescribing drugs to children for behavioral issues at a young age makes them more willing to experiment with drugs later. In the same way, the increasing acceptance of marijuana societally also serves as a gateway to experimenting with more dangerous substances. And once addicted, those addicts develop a false sense of security because of the availability of Narcan, the drug used to reverse the lethal effects of an overdose.

“They count on that Narcan for somebody to save them, but these overdoses usually happen at night and we can’t save them with Narcan if we’re not awake to save them,” McAuley said.

She picked a stage production as the way to tell her daughter’s story because most schools have theater programs, and McAuley believes the only way to prevent addiction is to instill that message at an early age.

“If I write her story and put it in a script for a play, then this could go into the schools, and they could perform it,” McAuley said. “These young kids can see this and remember Amanda’s face and say, ‘Maybe I don’t want to try a drug because I don’t want to die like Amanda and she had everything.’ If one person can connect with it, I’m OK with that.”

McAuley wrote the initial script and then hired another writer to flesh out the dialogue and the story arc. After some costly missteps, she hired Stacy Anderson to direct the production and connected with Alex Thomas of Nexus Sound Studio, who worked on the music. “Amanda” features 13 original songs.

The cast include 30 actors — some local, some coming in from Cleveland — along with 10 singers and 10 dancers.

“It was my vision. I wanted to go big,” McAuley said. “There’s this song, ‘Choices.’ It ends my play. It’s so beautiful. You’re going to walk out of that place feeling just … ‘Wow.’ It’s about making choices and thinking about your choices. I don’t know how this has come together so perfectly, but it is.”

In the scene depicting Amanda’s death, two dancers dressed as angels appear.

“Her dad is trying to revive her and the angels are dancing, and it just hits you,” McAuley said. “It’s so emotional. She’s gone, but it also makes it beautiful — she went to heaven. I have peace with the fact that she’s in heaven. She was struggling and now she isn’t anymore. She didn’t like life at that moment. It just destroyed Amanda. She said, the day before she passed, to her dad, ‘I don’t think I can beat it, dad.’ It’s all I think about.”

McAuley said she feels divine guidance as this project comes closer to being a reality.

“This is not something that I wanted to be doing. I’d rather be sitting at my table right now with Amanda, but I feel God chose Amanda and me. Amanda had something special, and I’m a hard worker. I don’t stop, and I don’t take on anything unless I’m gonna follow through with it. I feel strong about this. I feel God is putting all the right people in my path. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m listening to him, and I just keep going because he just gives me signs every day … I’m going to do it for our kids. I’m going to do it for Amanda, and I believe God wants me to.”

If you go …

WHAT: “Amanda — She Didn’t Mean to Die”

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Powers Auditorium 260 W. Federal St., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets range from $20 to $80 and are available online at experienceyourarts.org and by calling 330-259-9651.