The mystery has been solved, the criminals arrested, but there remains a lot of “cleaning up” to do. Trials to be run. Bodies to be buried. Reports to write. So here’s a look at the Backstage experience of CLUE.
Rehearsals were 3 times a week, each lasting nearly two hours. From a story point of view, Clue was one of the most complex stories that TCIS has performed so far.
“So who killed who?” is a popular question I heard many times. CLUE is worth watching at least three times, one for the laughs, second to understand the story, and third to catch all the jokes and references. Besides memorizing lines, the characters were also difficult to act out, because of how they try to hide their motivations while simultaneously being so terrible at hiding it. With a lot of practice, and pointers from our director Mr. Hagen and assistant director Ms. O’Leary, we managed to pull through.
The real kicker came on the Friday and weekend before performance week, when we had a 12‑hour tech rehearsal. It was absolutely boring for the actors and stage crew, but nevertheless necessary for setting suspense in the show. The makeup was done by Mrs. Hagen, Soojin Kim ’29, and some of our cast members; hair was done by Ms. O’Leary; and the costumes were provided by Ms. Barbara Jang. Together, they captured our characters perfectly and helped us fully step into our roles.
All in all, it was a terrific experience, and I hope more people will join next year’s play, so that we can continue to do bigger and better performances! While I cannot name every single person who helped bring this performance together, I would like to say thank you to everyone who did!
With that I would like to end with some fun facts:
- For the third night, Mr. Hagen secretly replaced the document in the file with a selfie of himself without Wadsworth knowing (Wadsworth, luckily, was able to remain in character).
- During the second night, Ms. White’s pearls kept breaking, leading her to discover that her husband had given her fake pearls.
- Mr. Green really did leave on Thursday to Canada (in real life!), where his next assignment is.
- Colonel Mustard is an expert at making the ‘Chad’ face.
Awesome performance by all involved!