by Alexi Stonehouse
What's It All About?
- A Murder Mystery for an acting company to perform to an audience
- The actors improvise the dialogue based on plot and character briefs provided by Lazy Bee Scripts
- The audience members question the cast
- The audience try to work out whodunnit
What Does Lazy Bee Scripts Provide?
Lazy Bee Scripts supplies a pack of material, including:-- An Overview for the Organiser, including
- Guidelines for preparing the mystery
- Guidelines for running the mystery
- Suggested timings
- A "narrative arc" for the mystery
- Key plot points
- Essential events
- Character Briefs for each character
- Character description
- Character history
- Motivation
- The Solution
- An explanation of who dunnit and why!
- Additional Materials
- Newspaper cuttings, text messages, an e-mail and a press release, plus a love letter.
- A brief biography of each of the characters to help the audience remember who's who.
- Detective Sheets for the audience to submit their accusations
Note that Lazy Bee Scripts does not provide a script for the dialogue.
Because the actors are interacting with the audience, it is not possible to stick to a fixed script. Instead the actors improvise dialogue based on the "narrative arc."
| What's a Murder Mystery Event? |
- The audience members are brought together for a fictitious 'special event'. A murder takes place, which the participants are invited to solve.
- In this case
- A murder mystery in which the cast mingle with the audience to improvise the plot.
- After initial mingling, there's a murder! (That should not come as a shock.) The corpse is dragged away, while the audience consider written clues.
- Further mingling gives the audience more information (including some written evidence), allowing them to interrogate the suspects.
- After the audience have made their accusations, the cast play out a final improvised scene to reveal whodunnit.
- This Mystery Needs
- An 'acting company' of 6 to 7 people, including at least 3 men and 3 women
- One set comprising furniture
- Estimated run times (which may vary enormously!)
- Improvised elements: 80 minutes
- Audience interrogation: 30 minutes
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| Want to know more? Download the (pdf) Taster Pack |
What's the Mystery Here?
Guests are gathered together to meet celebrity world-renowned psychic, Claire Voyant. She plans a séance to raise the spirit from the 1800s who was rumoured to know the whereabouts of priceless treasure. Several local VIPS have been invited to witness the occasion:
Police sergeant Laura Norder, who is off duty, but here because she's Claire's sister.
Museum creator, Anne Teek.
Anne's husband Manny Festo, MP.
Doug Upstuff, an archaeologist.
Ellie Mentry, a teacher.
Property Developer Bill Dersyard, Ellie's husband.
Claire has recently been making headlines under a cloud of accusations that she's a fraud. Not only that, she's about to publish a book which threatens to reveal lots of juicy secrets about the other characters. This is not going to end well... and it will be up to the audience to sort things out.