Anatomy of a Murder (Mystery)

Article by Becky Fillinger

There’s lots of chatter about the upcoming outdoor murder mystery, Mystery on the Mississippi: St. Anthony Falls which will play out on the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam in June and July. We talked to co-creators Tim Wick and Duck Washington about what to expect during the immersive performances. Pull out your vintage 60s clothing, get your questions ready and help solve the mystery!

Q:  How did the collaboration between the Mississippi Park Connection, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and Fearless Comedy Productions come about?  

Tim - I have been friends with one of the rangers from the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area for some time. She was working on enrichment programs for the park and got in touch with me about doing something more theatrical. Mississippi Park Connection has been hosting excursions on the Jonathan Padelford for a few years and they wondered if we could put together a show. I had been creating some murder mysteries for a lodge in Wisconsin and suggested a murder mystery. 

After that, we just had to figure out how to create a show that was going to work with an audience in a confined space for two hours that also managed to educate the audience about the history of the river at the same time. It was a lot of work to come up with a format that worked, but the end result was really pleasing and got great feedback from the audience.

Tim Wick

Duck - I know one of the main focuses of the Mississippi Park Connection was to try to get people to connect with the river in some way. One of the reasons we were contacted was to provide an opportunity for both regular patrons to connect with it and also attract some patrons that might not spend as much time on the river. Since that first year in 2017 we have done something with the parks every summer. Tim has been the primary producer on all of those shows, co-writing them with Eric Thompson. I have been the director of all the shows and have played a pivotal role in also helping design its functionality in such unusual performance spaces.

Duck Washington

Q:  I understand the program has morphed from a boat performance to a Zoom performance during the pandemic to a walking tour at St. Anthony Falls this summer. What was the inspiration to continue tinkering with the program? 

Tim - The inspiration, more than anything, was necessity. The pandemic made it impossible to do an in-person show in 2020, but we still wanted to do something so we wrote a show that could take place online.

This year, in-person performances are possible but we all felt it might be too soon to put 100 people back on a boat together, so the Park Service and Mississippi Park Connection asked us if we would be interested in doing the show on the lock instead. We were really interested in the new challenge. We had to write the show completely differently than the shows we'd created for the Paddelford, and that was a very exciting problem. We're still working through some of the problems but the end result should be really interesting and fun.

Duck - You want to always be retaining and advancing the work you've built on. It has been a hard couple of years, but I feel it is still really important to connect the members of our community to the resources the park system provides. You don't want them to just forget about the river for two to three years.

2019 photo of the Fearless Comedy Productions cast and crew (costumes unrelated to the current Murder on the Mississippi production).

Q:  What's the plot line of this murder mystery? Is it completely fictional? Will attendees learn history of the area during the production? How should an attendee prepare in advance of the show?

Tim - The audience will be asked to solve a murder that took place when the Upper St. Anthonly Lock originally opened in 1963. We've tried to focus our shows on specific eras in the history of the river. When we were on the Paddelford, for instance, we began with the gangster era of the 1920's. Then we looked at WWII and the post-Civil War periods. All of those time periods had different interesting things happening on the river and we used those historical events to inspire our writing.

I don't want to give too much away, but the audience will meet a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who built and maintained the lock until it was shut down in 2015 and recently handed over to the Park Service. He will be asking the audience to help him solve a mystery. The audience will meet people who were working on and near the lock in 1963 and will need to figure out which one of them is the killer.

This show is completely fictional. In other productions, we've pulled characters from history, but the original opening of the lock didn't provide a lot of interesting subjects - so we created our own. We used the reasons for the creation of the lock along with changes that were happening along the river, like the movement of the flour mills out of downtown Minneapolis, and environmental concerns that have always been part of development on the river. 

We always hope that while the audience is trying to solve the mystery, they will learn something - so there is a lot of history about the dam, the lock, and the local area included in the show.

Attendees don't need to do anything to prepare, but should be aware the audience will be moving around the lock during the show and will be invited to interact with the characters to solve the mystery. The lock is handicapped accessible, so those with mobility impairments will be able to enjoy the performance.

Duck - While nothing is really required of our audiences, often we have had patrons come dressed up for the period. Those that wish to should feel welcome to dress in their favorite early 60's stylings. We will do some travelling through time but they can do it in style.

Q:  What are the dates of the production?  

Tim - Performance dates and times are:

June 24 / June 25 / July 15 / July 16

Because these are walking groups, each performance will be in front of a small group so tickets are very limited. Get tickets here. We encourage people to pick them up as soon as possible!

Q:  Do you see other collaborations happening in the future? I sure hope so!

Tim - We hope to be working with the Park Service and Mississippi Park Connection for many years to come! We already had been developing our next script for the Padelford when the pandemic hit and are excited to get back to that show someday soon.

Duck - I feel like we have had a strong collaboration over the past five years. The parks and the audiences have seemed happy with what we have put together, and it has definitely felt like a success on our end. Who knows what future possibilities there may be? Maybe we will do another show on the Jonathan Paddleford, maybe we will do mystery via canoe trip (I just made that up!). Anyhow, there are lots of possibilities. 

Q:  How may we follow your news?  

Tim - You can follow Fearless Comedy Productions on Facebook and our website. The Mississippi Park Connection is on Facebook. The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area is also on Facebook.