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MSU English Club to put on interactive murder mystery

Minot State University senior Mya Temanson is a member of the MSU English club that will be putting on an interactive murder mystery on Oct. 30 at MSU’s Hartnett Hall. Submitted Photo

Halloween is the perfect season for mystery and Minot State University’s English club will be putting on an event full of spooky, interactive fun for the citizens of Minot on Saturday, Oct. 30.

“We know what’s going to happen and who the murderer is but the audience will get the fun of figuring it out,” said Mya Temanson, a senior at MSU and one of 12 performers and writers of the interactive murder mystery.

The event will begin in Aleshire Theater in MSU’s Hartnett Hall on Saturday, Oct. 30, with three showtimes at 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 9 p.m. Tickets cost $5, and all proceeds go to the English club. People can make reservations in advance on Facebook or can show up at the theater before a performance. The audience will be required to wear masks due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Performers have all been vaccinated against COVID-19 and will not be wearing masks to enable them to act more freely.

The audience will have an opportunity to interact with and question the performers at different points about the mystery as they follow them through Hartnett Hall and will be able to try their hand at solving the riddle.

The mystery is set in 1950 and revolves around the murder of the infamous Dr. Charles Hurst, who has just presented a new miracle drug he concocted.

Temanson plays his wife and one of the murder suspects, Mary.

Any of the attendees could be the culprit.

Minot State’s English Club put on its first interactive murder mystery in 2019. The 2021 production will be similar but is a bit more structured, said Temanson. They are working off a script and have a general idea of what will happen. However, even the players aren’t exactly sure of how their interactions with the audience will impact the final production.

Temanson said the club doesn’t necessarily have a lot of mystery buffs but does have a lot of writers as well as some members who had a theater background in high school. They have been having a lot of fun getting together and planning events like the interactive murder mystery.

“I’ve been enjoying every single minute, every point of the process of this project. I have written scripts in the past. In fact, when I was really young, I was really big into making movies, but I didn’t expect myself to ever return to that sort of form of creative writing. Writing a murder mystery that’s supposed to be interactive is a whole other dimension,” Temanson said. “It’s been a really fun challenge, especially when you get to think about all the ways one can break the fourth wall. That isn’t so typical in a regular dramatic piece of writing.”

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