Heritage Theatre Festival

Helms Theatre

July 9 – July 26, 2014

Directed by:  Bryan Garey

Scenic Designer:  Brian Barker

Costume Designer:  Tricia Emlet

Lighting Designer:  Nick Belley

 

 

Shear Madness is a murder mystery that takes place in a hair salon.  An upstairs neighbor is found murdered after playing her piano incredibly loudly, and all the employees and customers of the salon are suspects.  What makes this play truly unique is that the audience becomes involved in questioning the suspects.  It requires the performers to memorize several extra scenarios of dialogue that they may never get asked, in order to create the perfect representation of solving a mystery.  The audience even gets to vote on who they think is the culprit, which is revealed at the end.

 

There was a practical realism with the sound to this piece.  The music in the salon needed to represent the kind of music that such places would have on.  The moment the police burst in needed to be shocking and disruptive.  The neighbor upstairs needed to be properly noisy, and the piano piece selected to ensure frustration on the part of the would-be murderer.  All this formed the basis for my research on this play.  There was some tongue-in-cheek work that could be done given the kind of play this was, and I reveled in it.

 

I like the practical nature and artistry of using natural devices to create sounds.  I love using live phone ringers when possible, since it adds a level of authenticity, but allows the phone to be a character, to ring in a certain way, and to exist artistically within the world of the play.  This phone was a bit more of a unique challenge.  One of the suspects places a phone call before the police burst in.  The director wanted the audience to have the option of calling that number to find out if it was genuinely to the person she said she called.  So, we bought a phone trunk simulator.  It allowed the phones to ring as they naturally would, but it also created a dial tone and genuine ring sounds for whomever would use the phone, so it sounded genuine.  This extra step added to the depth of the mystery that the audience became involved in.

 

At the end of the play, when the murderer is accused and arrested, the officer thanks the audience, but mentions that future performances might see one of the other characters as the murder.  During this moment, I composed some brief musical stings to punctuate each person appearing.  It added an extra fun level to the end of the show.