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C.F. students stage interactive whodunit

by NANCY KIMBALL The Daily Inter Lake
| March 8, 2006 1:00 AM

An old-fashioned whodunit mystery. Interactive theater. Homemade lasagna.

Interested?

Then be at the Columbia Falls High School cafeteria by 6:30 p.m. this Friday or Saturday night or March 17 or 18, and watch how it all plays out.

Better yet, come more than once. Everything can change from one night to the next - depending on audience members and how much they participate in "Signing Off at WHIP Radio."

That's the mystery dinner theater to be staged by the Columbia Falls High drama program. Lea Shanks directs a cast of 16 freshmen through seniors.

Here's the setting:

You walk into the cafeteria, artfully transformed to become the set for an old-time radio show. You enter with the understanding that you are there to be part of the taping of the next episode of "The Young and The Arrested."

The impending drama, romance, comedy and mystery are palpable.

Enter Shanks with an advisory note: Be vocal. Be interactive. There is a lot of opportunity for the audience and actors to engage in conversation and, thus, change the killer's identity.

Oh yes, there's a murder. So pay attention, because the actor you see on stage for the radio mystery just may be an entirely different persona from the one which comes out when the radio microphones are switched off and the "real" life of the play takes over.

Untangling those personalities, and getting to the bottom of this hideous misdeed, is the audience's job. The "investigative team" each night will be led by an able investigator as the audience questions actors between acts.

At that point, there is no script - there is only quick thinking and improvisation.

To be sure, Shanks said, she has led the cast in practicing two different endings to play into the hands of the "investigators."

But she also has led them in some quick-thinking activities, in trust activities.

"I told them, 'You've got to know your parameters, but you have to know that you can trust your partners on the stage,'" Shanks said. "They've been doing just fabulous with that."

It's been a vigorous exercise in learning how to improvise, with new and experienced actors coming in at differing levels of ability. It's been a challenge of coordination among the actors, the chefs and the wait staff.

Members of the LaCuisine family and consumer science class will prepare a three-course meal, beginning with bread and antipasto, followed with homemade lasagna and salad, and finished with coffee and chocolate-dipped biscotti.

Members of the Columbians jazz ensemble will serve as the wait staff each night.

Shanks encouraged patrons to buy tickets in advance, both to ensure their seats and to give LaCuisine an idea of how much food to prepare.

Tickets are $12 each. Buy them at the high school office between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., at The Glacier Wallflower in Columbia Falls, or Montana Coffee Traders in downtown Whitefish and in Kalispell.

If they're still available, tickets will be sold at the door each night.

All proceeds go back to the drama program.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.