In the Murder Mystery project, we chose a city and a time period to take place in. Our group chose Buffalo, New York in the year 1922. I learned that urbanization was taking massive leaps at the time. The Prohibition, a nationwide ban on alcohol, sent some cities into chaos with crime rates skyrocketing. We incorporated the Prohibition into our story by making it take place in a speakeasy, which is an illegal bar. We came up with the idea for the story by researching what life was like in the 1920’s, including inventions around at the time. Our final story was about the inventor of the polygraph being murdered by a stray killer from an organized killer gang. The characters found out which one killed the inventor, and bring them to justice and eliminate them from the group.
Rehearsing was a challenge at first because not everyone was on the same page about the story. Making a script and revising it over and over proved to be very useful to get us all in the know about the story. If we didn't know what to say to progress the story, we referred to the script. After a lot of trial and error, I think we got the acting down pretty well. The second group that tried our story made it flow very well. As long as the actors are getting audience to ask proper questions, it goes very well. During the run throughs with the audience, I think we did well with costumes, props, and setting up the room.
Overall in the Murder Mystery project, I learned that when writing as a group, we must make a general idea of our story first, then flesh it out with details and red herrings and character backgrounds. If we need someone to understand something about our story, we need to repeat it and make sure they understand what the clues are.
Rehearsing was a challenge at first because not everyone was on the same page about the story. Making a script and revising it over and over proved to be very useful to get us all in the know about the story. If we didn't know what to say to progress the story, we referred to the script. After a lot of trial and error, I think we got the acting down pretty well. The second group that tried our story made it flow very well. As long as the actors are getting audience to ask proper questions, it goes very well. During the run throughs with the audience, I think we did well with costumes, props, and setting up the room.
Overall in the Murder Mystery project, I learned that when writing as a group, we must make a general idea of our story first, then flesh it out with details and red herrings and character backgrounds. If we need someone to understand something about our story, we need to repeat it and make sure they understand what the clues are.