Mauricia and Ellie, Young Producers at Chol, reflect on their online murder mystery investigation event
We recently produced and delivered an online murder mystery investigation event. The goal was to create an immersive event with lots of audience participation and interaction. Due to Covid-19, we had to change and adapt the production and delivery of our event, overall leading us to explore a new, virtual way of event production.
About the event:
Before the event, to give the audience members the feeling of being in an interrogation room and interrogating a suspect, we sent out physical suspect files to each of our audience members.
The event began with the victim of the story, Alice Green, who was unfortunately killed in a fire committed by one of the suspects, describing her encounter with our first suspect of the night, Theo Baldwin. Following this, each audience member was put into a breakout room with Theo Baldwin and interrogated him using questions sent by us. This process was repeated two more times for another two suspects, Jodi Shaw and Emmanuel Lee. Each interrogation session lasted roughly ten minutes and gave the audience members an opportunity to ask questions and write down notes.
Next, the audience members were put into a separate breakout room to discuss who they thought the culprit was. On their return to the main room, they were greeted with a voting poll asking them to vote on who killed Alice Green.
After the voting, we revealed who the real culprit was – Jodi Shaw.
The night finished with a Q&A.
We were paired up to work on this particular project due to our interest in similar theatre styles, and we both liked the idea of a Murder Mystery. Managing full-time college work with the project especially during the pandemic was challenging but helped us to develop our time-management and organisation skills and gave us confidence in our adaptability.
The project was a huge learning curve and changed our outlook and perspective on virtual theatre and performance. It was an amazing learning experience and we both really enjoyed working with Chol Theatre and with each other. We are looking forward to exploring further opportunities using the skills and confidence developed throughout this project.
These workshops are part of our Tall Shadows programme funded by Arts Council England.
