Writing a play is an exercise in creativity and vulnerability. Falling into the lives of the characters. Speaking through their voices. Learning to tell a tale through action. This isn’t always easy for a new writer to grasp right out of the gate. Some plays take years of patient work to create. And the inspiration for theatre can burst from unlikely and unexpected wellsprings. How to Solve a Murder represents the third playwright to venture a solo writing work at MMP. Janis Kunz, acclaimed MMP Hall of Fame Artist with multiple awards to her name, makes her debut as a scribe for the stage in this loving homage to P. G. Wodehouse. In her own words, she’ll tell us the tale of how this play began life several years ago…

THE PLAY I NEVER SET OUT TO WRITE: The Making of How to Solve a Murder

Originally published on SoCal Writer’s Showcase

At first I resisted the idea of writing a play. I don’t have time, I told myself. Writing is very hard for me and I always beat myself up about it, I argued. Plus, it’s so cliché: An actor who says, “I’m writing a play!” But my brain didn’t listen to me. My brain had other ideas. It didn’t care about my reservations. Nope. It began writing opening sentences….

It all began at a dinner with my brothers, a fellow actor, and her family. We were at our local Denny’s, THE place for us actors since it’s the only diner open after shows close. My fellow actor told us of a play she was writing. Then my younger brother made an off-hand comment to me, “You should write a play.” “Yeah right,” I countered. “(In an affected Dr. McCoy voice:) I’m an actor not a writer, Jim.” But I should know he never makes off-hand comments. He always knows just how to strike a chord in me to get me to rise to a creative challenge. Like when he said, “A real actor laughs in character,” when I broke character during one of our many adventures as children where we would pick favorite characters and pretend to be them all day long. At the dinner, he sealed my fate by saying, “It could be a ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ parody, similar to those stories you used to write for us to read, and you could call it ‘Reeves and Brewster.’”

That was all my brain needed. It pictured what the entire thing would look like in the tiniest of nanoseconds, and after that brief flash, began to reconstruct the elements. The compelling, I-have-to-write-this-now, elements. The two title characters would be trying to solve a mystery (since the plays we performed were murder mysteries this would make it easier to actually get produced, because who wants to write a play that never gets put on?); they’d be similar to Wodehouse’s brilliant creations but with new traits to make them their own people; it’d be set on a train in the English countryside, a riff on ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and also all those stories where murder happens in a sleepy little village; the other passengers would have intriguing lives and things to hide; there’d be hidden identities and dead bodies like in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’; there’d be a crazy climax involving shouting, London bobbies, and multiple reveals; and two humorous criminal characters from the old stories I’d written would make a cameo. With one sentence, my brother had set the entire thing in motion. I paid him back by making him read and critique my first scene after I’d written it.

From that first moment on, after the flash of inspiration from my brother’s not-so-off-handed comment inside the Denny’s, the project of writing my play took on the shape of all my writing projects. Step one: I create in a frenzy …even when I don’t want to. Such as at rehearsals for that season’s play (“That can be the banker’s name and dialogue quirk!” Furiously writes note in phone’s memo app in between dressing the stage). Or while falling asleep, ALWAYS while trying to fall asleep (“What if it caught fire! That can be a Wodehouse reference! And what delicious reactions the cast can have!” Clicks on bedside lamp. Grabs memo app). Step two: Ideas peter out and I question everything I’ve written (“This sucks!!! What was I thinking!! I’ll never finish this!!!!”). Step three: I stash the project away – far, far away – until I have the fortitude to look at it again, telling my brain if it even tries to write another line of this play, I will never speak to it again. Step four: I come back to it after forgetting what I wrote, enjoy it as a reader, laughing at the jokes, wondering how I even came up with something like this, then get excited and can’t wait to finish so I can share it with others. Step five: I knuckle down with coffee, snacks, phone on silent, and a determination to do this project proud because it deserves to see the light of day and have people laugh at it as hard as I did (“Brain, if you don’t help me finish this – as strong as what we wrote in the beginning, I’ll never speak to you again”).

So what began three years prior became How to Solve a Murder. And I’m thrilled to say it’s slated to be put on in the 2023 season! From the first few excitedly written notes to the final draft read and reviewed by its future director and producer, my play and my writing of it weathered a global pandemic, enrollment in a bachelor degree program (which drastically reduced my ability to write anything more than the thousands of words required to get A’s on the assignments), the death of my father which threw my entire life into new perspectives, a move to my own apartment, and many other life changes. Even though I never set out to write this play, I’m glad I wrote it. I’m happy I finished it. And I still get a shiver of excitement when I get to say, “I’m an actor. …And I’ve written a play!”

—Janis Kunz, Writer of How to Solve a Murder

We’re bringing Janis’ witty and wonderful words to life at the VFW Ship 4084 on November 3, 4, 10, 17, and 18 at 7:30 p.m. This charming play features everything from mistaken identities, missing bodies, misheard secrets, and mishaps from overzealous sleuths. Tickets are on sale now at Red Rock Books, so please join us for one wild train journey. We can’t wait to share this work with you!

See you at the show!

–Master Mystery Productions