Five performers trade personalities as the experiment goes awry.
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Interactive Musical-Comedy Murder Mystery
Mind Over Murder
New bodies. Old grudges. Wrong minds.
A present-day brain-research laboratory
The machine can switch your mind.
It cannot improve your judgment.The Mystery
Five people. One machine. Nobody quite themselves.
Professor Werner Van Braun has a plan to save his terminally ill wife, Sarah: transfer her mind into the body of a fashionable French editor, then move himself into a younger man. His laboratory assistant, Lug, has ideas of his own.
The Electronic Versa-Vice does exactly enough to make everything worse. As bodies and personalities become hopelessly mismatched, vanity, jealousy and an inconvenient will turn an experimental breakthrough into a murder investigation.
The audience must keep track of who is thinking inside whom, question the surviving suspects and work out who made the final switch fatal.
At a Glance
Built for a room full of suspects.
Approximately 2½–3 hours with dinner and audience interaction.
The experiment, the investigation and the solution.
Present day; an eccentric machine anchors the action.
The Audience Has a Role
Everybody is a witness. Nobody is in the right body.
Selected guests become Hank’s mother, Sarah’s lawyer and an audience member who asks for a much-needed recap of the scrambled identities. The cast coaches these short exchanges in the moment.
The full room questions the suspects after Act Two and records its deductions on Detective Cards before the final-act solution.
Meet the Characters
Five performers.
A roomful of motives.
Professor Werner Van Braun
An aging brain scientist with absolute confidence in unreliable experiments.
Sarah Bellum
His wealthy Southern-belle wife, eager to trade her failing body for a younger one.
Lug
A musclebound laboratory assistant whose interference changes the experiment.
Colette
A French fashion editor who is much happier with her own reflection.
Hank
An amiable Midwesterner recruited as the Professor’s prospective new body.
Read & Produce
Open the case.
Read the 24-page excerpt, explore the complete script on New Play Exchange, or request a reading copy directly.
The excerpt is available here without registration. The complete script is available to NPX subscribers, or by requesting a reading copy. For production inquiries, contact Butch Maxwell.
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