Hello everyone! It’s been forever since we did one of these and after Murder Mystery I thought it would be a good time to share some thoughts.

Now that we’re on the other side of it all and a bit relaxed I’d like to take a moment to recap this year’s Murder Mystery Party. This is the second time that the Teen Advisory Council has helped host a murderous event. Both times I’ve been impressed, proud, and encouraged by the teens who choose to participate. This year, maybe a little more so only because for most of them it was a major step outside of their comfort zones.

For those of you who were not able to attend, here’s a summary of the night’s events. Our story was set in 1952 at the wedding of Eric Marvin and Ambreia Weasley. The wedding was set to happen at the old Marvin Hotel reopened by Eric’s father, Oliver, in the 1920s. As with any wedding, tensions ran high as the two families prepared to become one. Among the guests were unexpected family members, old lovers, and a really annoying wedding planner.  Old family secrets, jealousy, and a fear of communism conspired to derail the wedding ending in a night of bloodshed.  By the end of the evening, five people had died. The how of it all explained by our hapless, amateur detective. “Ok folks, so this is how it all happened: several years ago, Alex was left at the altar by Eric. This left her in a zealous rage and led to her planning his ultimate demise. From the beginning nothing went right in her murderous plot. She began her killing spree with Wanda her ex-wedding planner, who let’s face it, annoyed us all. From there, she had to get rid of Jon, who knew too much and wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. Poor Alexis was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and Alex had to kill her to tie up loose ends. She was finally able to reach her target with the poisoned toasts, where unfortunately Ambreia fell victim to Alex’s frustration with not being able to get to Eric sooner. In an effort to ensure that she finally executed her plan, she poisoned both glasses leaving Jami alone with her sister-in-law and ungrateful daughter and the Marvin household in shambles.”

We run Murder Mystery a little bit differently than other libraries. Instead of purchasing a kit and/or script, we create our own story line, characters, and timeline of events, all on our own, from scratch. By we, I mostly mean the teens. I help try to keep everything cohesive and on track, but I’m not always as helpful as I think I am. It’s a ton of work, but I think it helps us all know the story and our characters a little better, which makes for a more immersive and interactive evening. As a group of actors, we started meeting in October to begin outlining our story. This continued through February before we started practicing dialog pieces, timing, and reactions.

One of the challenges of an interactive and improvised evening is that sometimes, it doesn’t matter how often you practice, the audience surprises you. After our first attempt at a Murder Mystery in 2019, the three of us returning actors thought we knew what to expect from the audience. So this year, we spent a lot of time trying to prepare for detective questions from the guests. We prepped for questions about past murders, unknown connections to the Marvin Family, what we’d been up to at the time of the murders, and how we all felt about each other. However, that was not enough. This year’s guests did not focus on the things we thought they would and asked us questions about affairs, old school friends, and supposedly dead wives. Even though I spent a large portion of my evening running away from questions I couldn’t answer, the guests the guests had such insightful, on-point questions, that it definitely made for a more investigative evening.

In the end, it all worked out alright since the majority of the wrong guesses were for our Red Herring and no one seemed completely confused by the explanation. Hopefully if you were able to join us, you enjoyed yourself, had a little fun sleuthing, and weren’t completely thrown off by the ending of our little production. If you were unable to join us, hopefully we’ll see you at the next one!

Speaking of our next one, the last time we did this I swore up, down, and sideways, that we were never doing this again. That it was too stressful, too far outside of my own comfort zone, and not something I was interested in repeating. Thanks to COVID making me appreciate the opportunities to do things with the teens and the public, a graduating senior’s request, and of course Shelly who talked me into this the first time, I think I’m feeling good enough about all of it to try doing this every year. So, if you were unable to attend this time, be on the lookout for next year’s Interactive Murder Mystery brought to you by the Teen Advisory Council of MML and one very stressed out Jami.