What is the Project?

We were commissioned by the charity Gloucester Welcomes Refugees, to create a Christmas themed performance in the style of a murder mystery. 

A Masquerade Murder Mystery,  takes place in 1920's London where, an annual Christmas party is hosted by the countess. However, there is an unexpected guest whom every suspect harbours a secret connection...

The stimulus we used was a murder mystery game; Masquerade Murder originally set in Venice, Italy in 1755. 

We decided to change the time period and the location of the performance because we thought it would be a more familiar time period and setting and how it would have been easier to obtain costume and props.

Characters:

We used the basic characters from the original game and narrowed the selection down to the few we found the most interesting and best that we could individually expand on with characterisation.

Detective William Ivy - A detective in London, he arrives to solve the case.

Roger Stag - A man capable of anything, searching for his lost love, he wonders if she is at the party.

The General - A general during the war and the mother of Beatrice Bluebird.

The Countess - The host of the party and a countess of London.

Beatrice Bluebird - A woman of high class and the daughter of the general.

Daisy Dove - A young woman of high class and the younger sister to Dolores Dragon and the countess' niece. 

Dolores Dragon - A woman of high class who is the very protective, older sister of Daisy Dove and the other niece to the countess.

Reverend Weasel - A vicar of a church with an unusually suspicious nature...

Harriet Hare - A former high class citizen who unfortunately lost her wealth, but how?

Walter Wolf - A soldier looking for suitable housing after his time in the war.

Pepe - Just an ordinary butler of the countess...Or is he?

Red Cloak - The murder victim whom all suspects seem to have a past connection.

When we had been given our roles, we participated in playing the original game as our characters, in order to understand the setting of a murder mystery style performance and to better acquaint ourselves with the actors in our theatre company. 

Next, we did various activities in order to start understanding our characters better. For example, we played a game called 'Freeze' where, as our characters, two actors would start a scene and another actor would swap with someone and start a new scene after calling 'freeze'. We decided to play this game also, to familiarise ourselves with working together to create a scene or piece and to expand our skills with, for example; accents, tones, different movement techniques, posture and levels. 

My Character:

My character in the show was Beatrice. Masquerading as a bluebird, she is a woman who found herself to be suspected of a crime committed during the countess' annual Christmas party. Being the daughter of the general, she is well-respected and looked upon for being in such high standing in society. However, other suspects in the party don't seem to think she is all that she seems...

Practitioners:

We used various, different techniques from the practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski and theatre group, Commedia Dell'Arte. For example, we moved on to the activity 'Hot Seating,' in order to further characterise our roles and improve our improvisation skills.

We next carried out an activity from Commedia Dell'Arte. Using the stock characters such as Il Capitano, Il Dottore, Arlechinno and Pantalone, we attributed them to the characters of our performance. Then, we walked around a space as our characters however, we were led by a certain part of our body. For example, using the stock character Pantalone, the character of the Weasel was led by his nose, allowing him to naturally have a smaller posture and move around more covertly. This fitted his character well as he is very sly and inquisitive.

We also did vocal activities such as tongue twisters and activities to help improve projection and physical activities such as warm-up routines, in order to help energise and prepare ourselves for rehearsals. 

Directors:

Katie Mitchell:

Jamie Lloyd:

Additional Roles:

Apart from acting, I also had the roles of director and scriptwriter for the performance. 

I decided to write a script because, I felt it would be easier for myself and the company in order to create the performance. I thought a script would be a useful guide to know the structure and as a director, the overall vision of the piece where, we could refer to the script and adapt to any changes we have made during rehearsals. 

Here is a link to the script for the performance:

College Christmas Show Script.docx 

As Director:

As the director of the performance, I started with writing a schedule for organisation and to keep a record of where we were during our rehearsals. I also made sure we stuck to the schedule and not fall behind. For example, I set a reasonable deadline for when we would all have our lines learned by and with expectations of professionalism within our rehearsal sessions.

We first started with running vocal and physical warm-ups at the beginning of every rehearsal to better prepare all of the actors for the sessions. Then we continued by first doing a read through of the script to get an idea of how the overall look of the performance would be.

We continued further, where I began to block the scenes and in accordance to which actors were available, as I found that would be the easiest way to progress.