If you’ve always been curious about working on a play or performing in an interactive murder mystery, here is an opportunity for you. We’re looking for ladies and gentlemen to help us stage this show. It doesn’t matter what your level of theatre experience is. We welcome everyone of all types to try out.

Master Mystery Productions and Ridge Writers, creators of Goodbye Hollywood, Hello Out There, and Pauper’s Grave are teaming up once again to create a new show, a celebration to honor a century since Hercule Poirot’s first case, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie.  Set in 1940’s England, the mystery will be part play and part game show as guests get to interrogate the suspects during a traditional British fete.

ODE TO AGATHA

Casting Call:

Friday, April 28 and Saturday, April 29

from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

at Red Rock Books in Ridgecrest, CA.

Ode to Agatha is a single-day event to honor the book: Saturday, July 15, 2017 at 2 p.m. at Ridgecrest Presbyterian Church.  Mirroring traditional British church fetes, the event will feature food, games, and an interactive mystery from Master Mystery Productions.  We need actors to play these suspects!

There are 4 female roles and 2 male roles. We welcome everyone of all types and levels of experience to take part in the show. No theatrical experience is necessary. Auditioners will be reading selected passages from the script.  Actors must be 16 or older.  Anyone under 18 must have parental or guardian permission, and a parent or guardian must be at rehearsals with the actor.

SYNOPSIS

After receiving an unexpected inheritance from a deceased aunt, ardent book lover, Miriam Lancaster, decides to take a once-in-a-lifetime trip to England to visit the settings of her favorite novels.  She’s toured the London sites of Charles Dickens and tramped the Yorkshire moors of Wuthering Heights.  Next stop: Essex for The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie.  But no sooner has Miriam stepped onto the train platform in Shayle St. John that the British constabulary are on her heels, accusing her of a robbery.  Then she is swept to a grand country house as the guest of the very woman who accused her of stealing.  A massive fortune, embittered relatives, a troublesome marriage, poetry, patent medicine, and poison only add to Miriam’s adventure as it becomes clear a dangerous presence has taken up residence at Shayle Court.  Inspired by a double dose of British legends in the mystery genre, Ode to Agatha turns country house crime into a British summer fête game show where guests get to grill the suspects, examine the evidence, and solve a brutal murder themselves.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

MIRIAM LANCASTER– Bookish, intelligent, and socially awkward, Miriam is on her dream vacation touring the British Isles and the locations of her favorite stories.  While on the train to Essex, Simone Davenport accuses Miriam of purse snatching, but later withdraws the accusation and sweeps the baffled woman to her country estate.  Out of place at Shayle Court, Miriam is uncomfortable in the family drama where she finds herself.  Nevertheless, she seems oddly reluctant to leave Shayle Court.

SIMONE DAVENPORT– The eccentric and wealthy mistress of Shayle Court, Mrs. Davenport likes to think herself the lady of the manor and patron saint of the village, using her wealth and influence to chair many wartime and village societies.  However, she tends to view the village as her personal playground and uses the charity events as a way to promote her own interests.  She is a poetess with a flair for the melodramatic and theatrical despite the fact her poems are generally strange, incomprehensible ramblings.  Her second marriage to Tobias Davenport raises rumors in the village and dissent in her house.

TOBIAS DAVENPORT–Simone Davenport’s second husband, Tobias is an unashamed gold digger.  He makes no bones about marrying Simone for her money, and Simone does not disguise the fact she feels she has bought and paid for a prized possession by marrying Tobias.  They’re marriage is curiously placid as there is no deception between them.  He is constantly unfaithful to his wife.  He is the most likely suspect when murder makes a home at Shayle Court.  It’s a shame about his watertight alibi.

CAROLINE SHAW–Simone’s stepdaughter-in-law whose husband is currently abroad.  Virgil Shaw is Simone’s stepson whom popular belief supposes will be the heir of Simone’s fortune.  However, Simone’s flightiness about her will concerns the family.  Caroline is fiercely devoted to her husband despite misgivings about some strange letters she discovers in his writing desk.  Cool and reserved, Caroline is a consummate hostess and a voice of reason at Shayle Court.

JOANNA PARTH–Simone’s companion and housekeeper of sorts, Joanna used to run Shayle Court with iron determination.  She is a strong woman of a wide variety of quintessentially British interests: shooting, dogs, gardening, and a classic summer fete.  She has a clear affinity with Tobias over common interests, so common that they had a love affair under Simone’s nose.  But Caroline caught them and forced Joanna out of the house.  Joanna now works as a nurse in a neighboring village, but returns to Shayle Court for the fete.  Her dislike of Caroline is vehement.

OWEN SHAW–Simone’s unmarried stepson, Owen is Virgil’s younger brother and second-in-line to inherit Shayle Court should his brother and sister-in-law die childless.  He is a gentle, soft-spoken man training in medicine, a kindly man often overlooked because of his withdrawn nature.  However, he also has the strange habit of carrying a dose of highly lethal curare in his pocket, because he feels it gives him a latent power over people.  A cunning prankster, he likes to slip salt into people’s drinks without them knowing, a test and a game to prove how skilled he could be at poisoning them.  If provoked, the pranks increase in malice.

Rehearsal dates will be arranged after the casting call.  We expect to meet only twice a week.

We want to give the Queen of Crime a wonderful party, and we can’t do it without your help!  So please come join us at the casting call this Friday and Saturday for some good ol’ nefarious fun!

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We hope to see you at the casting call and later at Ode to Agatha!

–Master Mystery Productions