Murder Upon Murder

Farmington, Missouri, USA (and many other places across the USA) - This is a very cool piece of theatre that has been translated really well to a digital presentation.

From the submission by playwright/producer Patricia Schuelke:

Murder ballads are a subgenre of folk music that tell the stories of real-life murders. Murder Upon Murder is a full-length play with folk music that depicts an imagined meeting of five people from in Anglo-American murder ballads across a 300-year time span. This play was written in part as my senior capstone project based on musicological research on murder ballads at DePauw University. A different version of this play was staged in-person with the original cast in March 2020 in preparation for live performance at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on April 2. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the university was closed and the cast and crew separated to states across the US. After brainstorming with the cast and crew, I rewrote the script into a version meant to be performed on a virtual meeting platform. The original cast showed great resilience in going forward with a remote performance of the work. We rehearsed and recorded over Zoom and cast members recorded their own songs, some learning instruments to accompany themselves. We edited all the videos together and are proud to present Murder Upon Murder in full to the world. The cast includes Serenna Hallie Jones, Melanie Roma, Eric Boylan, Jonathon Tebbe, Anna Grace Roth, and Sarah Hennessy. Suzette Hartsfield directed, Noelle Johnson stage managed, Genevieve Miedema music directed, and I (Patricia Schuelke) wrote and produced the show.

Instagram: @schuelke.patricia

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