On Nov 18th, we at the Megaphone sat down with Mason Mitchell, long time member of Mask & Wig and actor in the last three Murder mystery productions to discuss the behind-the-scenes of everyone’s favorite Halloween improv show!

Q: What is Murder Mystery night?

A: It’s a murder mystery set up with 2 scripted scenes, an introduction scene with characters, and a confrontation at the end. Typically, characters would be spread out on the library deck, or at Olin since it was raining and anyone can come up to characters to ask them questions to try to solve the murder. 

Q: How did you come up with the theme for this year’s Murder Mystery?

A: It’s usually talked about during the first Mask and Wig meeting, they’ll ask people to think about themes. The following meeting they’ll collect all the ideas on a chalk board and choose 6 or 7 themes to vote on. Then it’s all put in a google form and voted on which one is most popular. This year was a tie between zombies and Barbie: Life in a Dreamhouse, but zombies were chosen after everyone closed their eyes and voted.

Q: What was the process of planning the plot of the murder mystery this year?

A: After coming up with a theme, I helped write, act, and costuming, but those mostly come from a person’s closet. For the writers, we all exchanged numbers and gathered in a study room for 4 hours to write the script. We went in depth for this year, with a spreadsheet of all the relationships and each character’s background. The writers this year worked really well together.

We planned the plot first and from there we went stereotypical camp character archetypes, and based on those stereotypes we went down a rabbit hole.

Q: Was there an audition process? If so, how did you get your role?

A: Last year and the year before, there was. This year, there was not an audition process, because we figured if you want to be in it and you’re in a theater club you can be in it. In the past, there would be 6 or 7 characters to audition for. However, instead of having 7 characters and 9 people auditioning, we just had 6 people who wanted to act and they were casted. 

Q: How did you handle answering everyone’s questions? I assume some people were thinking outside the box so how did you navigate those?

A: One of the ways we set up for the actors is a character sheet. So when asked about other characters, we would answer based on our relationships with this. But we also have answers for “my favorite book is…” and we would come up with answers to help us get into character. But when someone asks “what is your favorite movie?” or “why are you not the zombie?” I would answer as my character instead of myself. Because it is an improv show, we all became our character and said what feels in-character.

Q: Since it was raining on the day of the night and the mystery had to be moved to Olin, how did you adjust?

A: We were planning to have it on the deck anyway since the rain would’ve stopped by the start of the murder mystery. However, the problem was that it was raining while they had to prepare the set. We also had to quickly contact everyone from family, friends, and put a notice on social media to let them know about the move. While the indoors doesn’t fit the setting, since it’s set in camp, there wasn’t much that needed to be changed for the actors. Being in Olin was slightly more accessible and air conditioned, there was also more seating for everyone and we didn’t have bugs.

Q: How did you feel about the night overall?

A: I thought it went really well. It wasn’t my personal favorite (that was the ren fest one), but regardless I love muder mystery and I always enjoy participating in them. I loved being an extrovert this time. For the last 2 years I was playing introverted characters, in a corner by myself and rambling to myself until someone came to ask me a question. But this year I had to be the extroverted, stereotypical camp counselor and be like “How’s everyone doing!” The fun part about it being an improv show was that we can riff off of each other, and no one will know.

Q: Are there any memorable moments from rehearsal or from working with the rest of the cast and crew?

A: Writing it was a lot of fun because generally we were in a room for 4 hours just giggling and having so much fun. The second most memorable moment was the confrontation scene because I genuinely don’t know what happened, stuff happened and stuff didn’t happen that was supposed to but it was still so much fun and it all worked out in the end.

Q: What was your favorite moment(s) from the night?

A: We got a lot of the cast and officers and we all went and got Chili’s afterwards and it was a lot of fun. For the past 2 years, we would come together and get dinner afterwards. This year, even with people who didn’t want to buy anything, we all gathered for each other’s company and it was really memorable.

We hope you all enjoyed a glimpse behind the curtain on one of Southwestern’s most beloved student run events. And if you didn’t get the chance to attend this year, make sure to pull up next fall, we can’t recommend it enough!