Murder Mysteries

Writing interactive murder mysteries for dinner theater is a good way to get publicity for your work, and besides it’s fun. I’ve written interactive mysteries for nonprofits to use as fund raisers for several years and they have always been successful. Here are some tips on how to do it.

Now that we murdered him how do we get rid of him?

Most of the action takes place in the first act – no longer than 30 minutes for this. And get rid of the body. No one wants to eat with a body hanging around.

First act introduces the characters, makes their motives clear, drops a few red herrings and the murder occurs. Hint: afterwards make sure you can get the actor off-stage without out sacrificing you, him or her, or the rest of the cast.

Humor is essential – this is not literary fiction. The funnier the better since humor is the best red herring.

One of the actors is cast in the part of the investigator (though he or she need not be associated with law enforcement.) The investigator will entice the audience to join in and interrogate the suspects, who will protest, lie and do their best to lead everyone astray.

When do we eat?

I’ve always had one person who can interrupt the questioning but is not part of the cast. After-all, this is dinner theater and people paid for a meal. It’s best to use buffet service since this is faster for everyone and keeps extra people away from the audience and the cast.

After dinner when people are almost finished with dessert, the investigator will gather the suspects together and have the audience ask additional questions. Audience members are encouraged to discuss among themselves during dinner who would be the most likely suspect.

Go ahead prove we murdered someone.

When the questions run out, the audience is asked to vote. The votes are collected and the investigator is asked to name the murdered. Which he or she does by briefly recapping each ones motive and saving the culprit for last. At the end, the cast is introduced with the victim last.

Prizes anyone?

Small prizes are awarded to the audience members who guess correctly and I always have one or two door prizes. These of course are drawn by the corpse as is tradition.

Scripted or improvisation?

No matter how much one of these mysteries is scripted, there will always be improvisation. I’ve written several with tight scripts (which the actors added to as they had fun with it.) I’ve also written several with that were mostly improvisations. This is no place for author egos. In my experience the actors make any script better when they add improvisation.

Play setting.

I prefer using a historical setting since the setting adds so much to any mystery, but any venue will do, as long as there's room for the actors and audience to interact.

Remember, if it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.