A note on casting
This show asks a lot of its cast. The beginning and the end are scripted, with a lot of improvisation in between. We recommend partnering with people from your local theater community for many of the parts. The others can go to amateurs and people with no theater experience at all. There are five main parts and thirteen more.
The evening
The show starts before it starts: a janitor mopping the stage, a sixteen-year-old taping cable at the light board, last year’s queen practicing her farewell walk in her sash. The set shows two rooms at once, the pageant stage and the curtained backstage corner where the contestants dress, size each other up and say the things nobody says into a microphone. The curtain hides nothing, and the characters complain about that all night.
Then Miss At-Large comes in late through the back door, alone, carrying a hardware store bag: eleven months in the county, nobody in the building rooting for her, and a shoo-in to win the pageant. Over the next hour, in full view, a pageant mother, a contestant in her last eligible year, an emcee of thirty-one years and a tech kid at the light board each get a reason to want her gone. Midway through the talent portion, the lights fail.
How your audience takes part
When the lights come back, an off-duty deputy stands up in row C. They have no badge and no business running this, and they say so. Then they swear in the entire house as witnesses: right hands up, out loud, with witness cards passed down the rows. The deputy walks the room through a re-enactment of the blackout and gets it wrong, and the audience corrects them out loud. One audience member is brought up to stand in for the victim. At intermission, the stage sits under work light with a chalk outline and a bagged trophy.
In the second act, the audience questions the suspects directly, through the deputy, and every actor answers in character for as long as the room keeps pushing. Then the house votes on who did it, with a show of hands counted onstage. And because this is still a pageant, there’s one more vote: the audience crowns Miss Cumberland.
The details
| Venue | A theater only. The show needs a full blackout, and the set shows two rooms at once: the pageant stage and a curtained backstage corner. |
| Sound and lights | Run by your venue’s technician, blackout included, with a Sound and Lighting Manager from your team as the link. |
| Your cast | Five main parts and thirteen more. See the note on casting at the top of this page. |