Sahuaro is producing a choose-your-own-adventure mystery with audience participation. The audience gets to decide what happens as the story unfolds, which includes elements of crime-solving alongside humor. Without the actors knowing what’s happening next, this allows for multiple paths and endings that could go “good” or “bad,” but there should be a different storyline for each showing. The title of the play is “You’ve Ruined a Perfectly Good Mystery!” Tyler McNeal, a senior in the drama club, shared, “It follows a haughty detective and a lively doctor, who must clash with a Bond-like supervillain and navigate a dastardly storyline controlled by a preposterous narrator!”

The choose-your-own-adventure concept isn’t just limited to theatre. It has crossed multiple genres, including book series, board games, and online adventures. “Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern” is a popular off-Broadway production that includes the same unique audience-driven experience. While the core feature of Sahuaro’s production is audience participation, it often involves choices for the actors, whose decisions dictate the path the story will take. While dealing with a mystery element that involves crime, the humor element incorporates light-hearted tones into that same path.

Students are being challenged in that they are met with the goal of disguising a typical staged performance with realism. Also, channeling the audience’s actions and emotions on the spot really illuminates the depth the students will have to go to embody their character in their projected storyline. This impromptu type of live-art entertainment is not necessarily something that can be taught by an acting coach or mentor, as it truly encourages the artists themselves to become in-the-moment writers of the narrative. The responses from audiences are also invaluable as they encourage greater spectacle within the play. Sahuaro is offering students who may consider becoming actors an opportunity to test their skills and mindsets for creativity. This challenge can draw the line between those who see theatre as a hobby vs. a career.

Sahuaro’s drama club will be performing three matinees and two nighttime shows: December 4th, 9:30 A.M and 7:00 P.M., December 5th, 9:30 A.M and 7:00 P.M., and the last showing will be December 6th, at 1:00 P.M. Because most drama productions at the high-school level are frequented by family and friends of the performers themselves, student Tyler McNeal offers many reasons why students that normally wouldn’t attend should consider this particular performance. “I may sound like an old person when I say this, but sometimes we should get off our phones once in a while and enjoy a classic, hard-working performance.” Tyler also mentioned the support that it lends to the theatre/tech groups at Sahuaro, which, as is the case in many high schools, does not always garner the same attention and emphasis that sports or other clubs tend to. The chance to support Sahuaro High School’s arts and enjoy a great performance with a promise of good humor is what this production is happy to boast.