Seeing Characters Come to Life

 by Thomas Kies

On October 14 and 15, actors from the Carteret Community Theatre will be performing MURDER ON THE MENU at the Culinary School at Carteret Community College.  Along with a stellar performance, there will be a brilliant three course dinner, a singer, and a multimedia mystery.  

The time, 1953.  The place, Paris, France.  The precise venue, Chez Beaujolais-the first American owned restaurant in Paris post-World War II. 

The Korean War has just ended but the Cold War rages on.  The guests for opening night at Chez Beaujolais:  Sally Willis, the first female US Ambassador to France.  Senator Winston Palmetto from the great state of North Carolina.  Captain Vladimer Smirnov, Soviet Ambassador to France and nephew of Nikita Khruschev

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The two special guests are Dr. Cassandra Hawking, eminent US physicist, instrumental in the design of the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus.  Sitting next to her is her love-stricken suitor, Elliot Chesson-Fitzpatrick, of the Boston Chesson-Fitzpatrick’s.

Okay, not only did I write this, but they were an actor short and now I’m playing the Russian ambassador.  My accent is driving my wife crazy. 

This is the third murder mystery dinner I’ve written for our local theater and the culinary school.  I have a blast because I love the theater…and food…and having my characters take on a life of their own.

Unless you get a movie or television deal, how often do you get to see your story unfold before your very eyes?  Hear your characters say your dialogue?  

And more importantly, I get to watch the audience.  I love it when they laugh at the jokes and work to try to solve the crime at the end of the evening.  How many people at those tables got it right? 

Sure, I can put playwright on my resume now, but I’m still learning the craft.  The very first year, at the end of the first act, I had to contend with a dead body in the middle of the dining room.  It’s just not fun trying to serve dinner around a corpse.

Kind of a distraction.  And not easy for the poor actor portraying the stiff. 

This year, I’m trying something a little different.  Sure, there’s a murder, but it happens long distance.  There’s no body to worry about.  But what is truly different, we have a main character that’s been poisoned, and we find out that we must find who the culprit is in thirty minutes, or the character will die.

There will be a ticking clock on the wall. The audience will be able to see how much time is left while watching the plot unfold before them.  

So, it’s a fundraiser for the culinary school at the college and for the community theater.  I may sell a few books at the event, but more importantly, I have an absolute blast. 

Murder Mystery Dinner

 

By Thomas Kies

Fair warning that this blog will be short.  One of the reasons is that it’s summertime here on the North Carolina coast and it’s too damned nice to be sitting for long in my office behind the screen of my laptop.

The other reason is that when I am in my office (which I do more often than I should) I’m working on a couple of projects including a new one for me.  I’m working on the script for a murder mystery dinner to take place early in September and hosted by our local college's culinary school. 

The characters for the mystery are all recurring from my Geneva Chase mysteries.  Seeing them come to life should be interesting.  We’re going to be holding auditions tonight and the director told me that the interest level is high.

She then went on to tell me that now the word has gotten out, people are asking how they can buy a table. 

When I write a book, there’s a certain amount of internal pressure involved.  I want to write something engaging and tell an interesting story. I want to write something that people want to read and once they have, they’ll say that it was worthwhile.

While writing this script, I’m feeling a familiar pressure, but in a different way.  When someone reads my books, I can’t see them.  Any reaction I get comes later.

There’s an old saying that goes when you write a book it’s like telling a joke and waiting a year or two to see if anyone laughs.

The murder mystery dinner is a different animal.  I’ll see right then and there the audience reaction.

That’s terrifying.

What if they hate it?  Or worse yet, what if they’re bored?

The working title for my mystery dinner is Death of an Author.  I hope that’s not prescient.

I’ve written a script mostly for laughs.  But now that I’ve sent it to the director, I’m thinking that perhaps I should have included more pathos.  But when you’re at a table with friends eating chicken cordon bleu, do you want a lot of soul searching?

This whole thing is a fundraiser for the Carteret Community Theater.  Their building was nearly destroyed during Hurricane Florence and they’re raising money to put it all back together again.  As I said, tonight the theater is doing auditions where they’ll be reading lines from the script.

This whole thing is making me almost as nervous as when I’m waiting for the national reviews for an upcoming book.  Point of information, this dinner was to be the launch of my newest book, WHISPER ROOM.  But the release date is August 2^nd and the dinner is scheduled for a month later.

So, I may be doing a launch/book signing before the theater puts on its show.  But, hey, we can sell dinner tickets while I’m selling books. Can't we?  This show business thing is all new to me.