During the month of October, people tend to gather around their televisions in order to watch Freddy, Jason, or some other creature in a mask chase down some helpless damsel who can't seem to stop tripping. We like to be a little scared, we like to try and guess “who done it.” Chris Klinger is bringing that spooky feeling to Farmville with his production of “Rehearsal for Murder” at The Waterworks Players.
“Rehearsal for Murder” is the story of a playwright named Alex Dennison and his deceased fiancée, Monica, who mysteriously committed suicide on the night of her Broadway debut. Dennison believes that his fiancée’s suicide was staged and that she was in fact murdered. He gathers up the cast and crew that were in the theatre on the night of her death in order to try to discover the killer.
The show is set in a theatre, fully involving its audience within the production. Without fully breaking the fourth wall, the characters in this show tend to have the action taking place all around the audience, as opposed to just in front of them. “It’s a murder mystery set in a theatre so its very environment specific,” said Klinger. “As soon as you come into the theatre you know that’s where everything is taking place so it locks you in.”
With six professional directorial credits under his belt, as well as time spent pursuing an acting career in New York, Klinger is no novice. It was his goal to bring Longwood and Farmville together to collaborate on this production. The large cast consists of many Farmville residents as well as several Longwood faculty members and students, including Greg Tsigaridas, Longwood’s senior computer systems engineer, in the lead role.
“I’ve watched him [Tsigaridas] memorize all these lines, every time I see him on campus he has that script,” said Klinger. “He has just dedicated his whole life to it. Just the other night we were going through the show and he didn’t have the script in his hand and I saw him really come to life. I saw freedom, I saw him enjoying himself and that’s what I love.”
With a rehearsal process of only five weeks it can be easy for things to start to feel stressful. While the volunteer cast and the crew certainly work hard they find time to have fun as well. “Some of the best moments when we are in break and we are goofing around with each other, or when somebody messes up a line and it’s totally ridiculous we just laugh forever about that.”
Even though they have fun, Klinger insists that all those involved with the production have been consummate professionals. Often times there is a stigma that surrounds community theatres as if they are unable to measure up. Klinger says with Waterworks Players this simply is not the case. All those who are there work just as hard as the people he has dealt with in a professional theatre environment, and often they have a smaller ego and more heart then their fully-professional counterparts.
“I want for the audience to feel alive in the world that the actors are creating,” said Klinger. “I want them to care about what’s going on and I want their hearts to be beating with anticipation in finding out what really happened and who really did it. If I can see them leaning forward and looking at each, if I can hear them at intermission talking to each other and trying to figure it all out then we have succeeded.”
“Rehearsal for Murder” runs October 16, 17, 23 and 24 at 8 p.m.. For ticketing information visit www.waterworksplayers.org.
