BENGALURU : The plot is this: Two woman head to a restaurant for a meal. A couple of drinks later, one of them collapses and falls dead. It’s a classic whodunnit with many suspects – her dining companion, the manager, the waiter, or maybe even the other diners. So far, WeMove Theatre’s upcoming performance seems like any other theatre production, but this is where there is, in more ways than one, a plot twist.
The audience members then take on the role of detectives to interrogate the suspects, played by four actors from the theatre company, as they try to solve the murder mystery. Aptly named Who Killed Agatha?, the “theatrical experience” is a dream come true for any crime fiction lover looking for something new during this pandemic. “We had a bank of stories that we hoped to turn into physical plays this year but then the pandemic struck. Staging them was not a possibility so we thought of converting it into an escape room type of game,” explains Abhishek Iyengar, co-founder of the theatre company.
The hour-long performance has a cap on the number of participants, and 20 of them will be divided into teams of four. Each team gets four minutes to question each suspect. The key, says actor-writer Aditya Naik, lies in asking the right questions. “Try to get more information or look for a motive to murder. Our answers might have subtle clues that could help the participant,” says Naik, who will be playing the roles of a forensic expert and a business partner of the murdered woman.
While entertaining for the audience, the performance also helps keep things interesting for the actors. “We have no idea of knowing what question might be sprung on us. But since we know our characters and their behavioural traits in details, our answers will be in line with them,” he adds. The play has been conceptualised by Naik and Sindhu Hegde, and written by Pavan Sharma and Venu Madhav.
Since the performance takes place on Zoom, the teams can make use of the individual breakout rooms to ensure other participants don’t figure out their strategy. But how much of this gamified experience counts as theatre? A lot, says Iyengar, who is looking for feedback from this first session to understand how future ones should be held. “The current times call for not just reinventing ourselves but also exploring and embracing technology. So it is still largely theatre but an experimental format that explores a new dimension,” he says. The event will take place on Aug. 29. Tickets are priced at `500 per head.