Murder on the Orient Express

 

I am in my favorite place as I write to you this morning. I am sitting in the T. Furth Center for the Performing Arts listening to echoes of voices and laughter. This is what I always do as we start tech week before our show.

How quiet it is in this huge building. How many rehearsals have I had here since I started with the theatre? This is my 7^th production, and I have loved them all…including this one!

As you probably know, we are producing another Agatha Christie show, “Murder on the Orient Express.” I always love to know the background of stories or plays and this is what I have found out about our choice of shows. Christie wrote this show following the true story of the disappearance of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. who was snatched from his crib. This child was the son of aviator, Charles Lindbergh. The ransom money was paid, but the child had already been killed. Of course, this event had an emotional toll on the family. Even so, they went on to have five more children. This case made national news in 1932, and Agatha Christie decided to write a book using the case as the springboard for her writing of this novel. More than one source says she wrote this book in room 411 at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul. The hotel itself was built in 1892 to accommodate folks traveling on the Orient Express Train. The hotel takes great pride in knowing she wrote the book there and they call room 411 the Agatha Christie. You can even stay in that room. (Well now, that would be a great field trip!) It was also rumored she hid the key to her diaries under one of the floorboards in room 411. The key was there, but the diaries were never found. Perhaps that is the charm and mystery of Agatha Christie.

Christie changed the child’s name to Daisy Armstrong, and using her amazing imagination wrote a story of murder and intrigue with a fabulous ending. Of course, she is always known for her surprise ending.

I find her life fascinating as we do not know all the moving parts. We do know she was stuck on the Orient Express during one of her travels. It was not due to a snowstorm, as in the play, but a deluge of rain. I can only imagine all these moving parts coming together for her to write the book.

Our theatre department has embraced Agatha Christie. Last year it was “The Mousetrap.” Once again, I chose “Murder on the Orient Express.” Just like Christie in her life, we also are a theatre company with so many moving parts and all are orchestrated by the students. Macy Bonifield kept a notebook of sketches last summer. She drew the sketches for the sets and tweaked them and presented them to me. Macy is an exceptional student, and she is studying to be a teacher. She will certainly be a good one as she is so dedicated to this show…to all the shows, really. Macy, along with Sean Carpenter, a recent graduate of Trine, designed and put the set together. They started in my garage and driveway a few weeks ago. For weeks I have had Trine students building, painting, working, laughing on the sets at my house. My job was to buy lunch for everyone! We finally moved everything over to the theatre but didn’t realize it was a five-hour job to put it all together. Finally, late last night we all gave a jump for joy as the last bolt was put on the sets. This year the students decided on a rolling set which is very interesting.

It is our tech week. That means anything that can go wrong will go wrong. There’s lots of last-minute painting. We still have to work with microphones, sound, and lights. I am very confident when I say we will be completely ready and excited for you to come see our show. We open for the high school students on Thursday at noon. We love sharing our passion for this production with students. Hopefully there will be time for questions afterwards.

My theatre group is growing. We love putting these shows on for you. They are so dedicated. We started the second week of September and here we are ready for you!

Don’t read the book ahead of time…I want you to be surprised! See you very soon!