Latest / The BSB Podcast / Exclusive Interview: Leta Chrisman of Stagecrafters' 'Murder on the Orient Express'

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Exclusive Interview: Leta Chrisman of Stagecrafters' 'Murder on the Orient Express' · The BSB Podcast

• 0:00
  Normally arriving late is a problem, but on the Orient Express being delayed gives everyone time to commit a crime.
• 0:05
  Today we're talking to Leta Chrisman our director or perhaps our conductor of Stagecrafter's Murder on the Orient Express who's keeping this train on track.
• 0:13
  Thank you so much for joining me today.
• 0:15
  Absolutely pleasure to be here.
• 0:17
  I'm so excited to be talking to you again and this show is kind of a very different from when we last talked about Perfect Arrangements.
• 0:23
  This is quite a big production.
• 0:25
  It is, we are on the main stage this time around.
• 0:28
  time you and I spoke, was working upstairs on our second stage.
• 0:31
  But this is uh very large, large show, as the title implies.
• 0:36
  It involves a train.
• 0:37
  oh
• 0:39
  And I'm so excited to see that train on stage because I can only just imagine how cool it is.
• 0:43
  ah But before we dive into that part, what initially drew you to wanting to direct Murder on the Orient Express?
• 0:51
  So I'm a big, I'm a book girl.
• 0:53
  uh I grew up reading mysteries and my mom and I were both huge Agatha Christie fans.
• 0:58
  This is one that hasn't, it's been adapted into films at least four times that I'm aware of, but this Ken Ludwig script is the first time it was adapted for stage, to my
• 1:07
  knowledge.
• 1:08
  So it's, uh the book itself has a lot more characters.
• 1:12
  He condenses a few of them to make it easier, I guess, to stage, which is really nice.
• 1:17
  uh
• 1:19
  And just the story is really cool.
• 1:22
  Poirot in the novel and in the show mentions that it is one of his most complicated cases.
• 1:29
  And I really just like there's a lot of moral gray area and a lot of really amazing characters involved in the show.
• 1:35
  So as a director, it's one of those things where just like, ooh, it's really cool.
• 1:40
  It's lot to work with.
• 1:42
  It does.
• 1:42
  And it's a huge ensemble piece, which is nice.
• 1:44
  Everybody's important, which is something I always look for.
• 1:47
  It's things that I...
• 1:48
  aren't just about these two people and everyone stands behind them.
• 1:50
  It's like a group effort to do the story.
• 1:54
  I am also a book girlie, I love mysteries and stuff like that.
• 1:59
  And so this is one of the ones that, no matter how many times I watch it, I'm always fascinated.
• 2:02
  And again, I'm not going to spoil the ending, obviously, if people haven't seen it.
• 2:05
  But it is one of those mysteries that you truly, I remember the first time, usually I pride myself on figuring out a mystery before it ends.
• 2:14
  And this is one that I didn't have a clue on how it kind of was pieced together.
• 2:18
  same.
• 2:18
  It's really great.
• 2:21
  So without spoiling too much then, what is kind of the story for people who aren't familiar with Murder on the Orient Express?
• 2:26
  So, Hercule Parrow is one of Agatha Christie's most famous detectives.
• 2:30
  She has a collection of them that she writes about, wrote about, him.
• 2:34
  He actually features in over 80 of her novels and short stories.
• 2:38
  I had to look up the statistics for fun.
• 2:40
  think it's 84 or 86.
• 2:44
  It's a ton, and they're all good.
• 2:46
  That's the fun part.
• 2:48
  He is Belgian.
• 2:49
  He is a noted international detective.
• 2:52
  And he has just, at the top of the story, he has just
• 2:55
  finished a case that he found kind of troubling and he's looking forward to some vacation but duty calls, Scottland Yard sends telegram to him in Istanbul and says, come home we
• 3:04
  have something cool for you to look at.
• 3:06
  So he runs into his old friend, Monsieur Bouc, who is ah one of the managers for the Wagon Leet, which is the train company, and he books himself passage The Orient express in first
• 3:18
  class to get back to mainland Europe where he needs to go.
• 3:24
  within the next few days because he's now on a time crunch and not getting a vacation.
• 3:29
  There are an assortment of characters who board the train alongside them.
• 3:32
  ah And that's about all I can...
• 3:37
  I'm not gonna...
• 3:38
  It's not a spoiler to say because the title of the show is Murder on the Orient Express that there's a good chance not everybody makes it to Paris.
• 3:46
  I think that's a safe bet.
• 3:48
  There might be a murder that happened.
• 3:51
  But it's...
• 3:52
  So all of the passengers are from different places.
• 3:54
  So they all have different nationalities, different accents, different behavior styles, which as actors and as a director is so good to get into.
• 4:03
  We've had a lot of fun.
• 4:04
  actually had dialect coaching on this one, people working on portraying the accents of the characters they're playing.
• 4:10
  And it's just been really fun.
• 4:12
  But the story itself is, it's so juicy and it's really hard to talk about without spoiling anything.
• 4:18
  So I'm gonna stop right now.
• 4:21
  But I think, but you know, when you're talking about the characters, I think you're right.
• 4:24
  There's such an eclectic group of people that I can only imagine that not only was it hard to cast this show, but also to make sure that everybody is like, I'm sure they're all
• 4:33
  great, it's like making sure that they're like, okay, this is like who you are.
• 4:36
  And like, have to make sure you nail that piece of it because it's so different than everybody else.
• 4:40
  Yeah, we have a Midwest housewife.
• 4:43
  We have a couple of New Yorkers.
• 4:45
  We have a Swedish maid.
• 4:48
  We have a British governess.
• 4:50
  We have a Scottish retired military guy.
• 4:54
  Bouc and Poirot are both Belgian.
• 4:55
  We have a Parisian train conductor.
• 4:58
  We have a Russian princess on the train as well.
• 5:01
  I feel like I'm missing someone and they'll point it out to me later, I promise.
• 5:05
  But there's 11 people total on the train.
• 5:09
  And it is such a diverse group of personalities and shall we say motivations.
• 5:16
  So it's a lot of fun to kind of work with all those nuances and build those relationships and have everybody kind of talking to everybody.
• 5:26
  sure absolutely and like you said with the motivations like everybody has a motivation and nobody has a motivation of the show and that's kind of intriguing part of it too.
• 5:33
  Well, and it's one of those things where things start not adding up and certain people seem kind of suspicious and some of them are just goofy and weird and I don't even
• 5:43
  understand what's happening here.
• 5:45
  uh Which is just part of fun for me.
• 5:50
  I will be very surprised if people who haven't read the story or seen one of the film versions stand up at intermission and go, well, I already know who did it.
• 5:58
  Because they'll probably be wrong.
• 6:04
  was gonna ask you about that because how do you preserve the suspense when many audiences probably already do think that they know the ending?
• 6:11
  know, that's part of, know, mysteries.
• 6:14
  A lot of people, read them, like, oh, I don't have to read it again.
• 6:16
  But like, obviously this is a different interpretation and there's different parts here that you can pull out.
• 6:21
  Well, the really fun part is that even if you've seen film versions, which I have, and even if you've read the book, because the book and the films all use the entire slate of
• 6:30
  characters that's in the original, the fact that we've combined a few and gotten rid of a couple, not in the murder way, just removed them from the story, for the stage version
• 6:40
  kind of changes things up a bit.
• 6:42
  Even if you think you knew the story, you know, who was this person may not actually be the same person that you remember seeing.
• 6:49
  I will say the most recent film adaptation was Kenneth Branagh directed and a whole bunch of other actors were in it.
• 7:00
  It's different.
• 7:01
  It's still kind of at the nugget of it.
• 7:03
  It's the same story.
• 7:04
  A bunch of people are on a train and somebody dies.
• 7:07
  But as far as who the characters are, how they relate to each other, all of that is definitely different in ways that I can't get into detail about.
• 7:16
  Speaking very loosely about it, I had seen the movie, obviously, I loved the movie.
• 7:21
  And then I after that I saw a production on stage.
• 7:24
  And I was like, I don't really, I was sitting there, I'm like, am I misremembering the movie?
• 7:28
  Am I misremembering the book?
• 7:29
  Because it is, like you said, it does have its kind of its own identity.
• 7:32
  And all the characters are still the same, but slightly different, you know.
• 7:37
  So that's really kind of cool.
• 7:39
  So then when you're approaching this,
• 7:41
  How do you want your production to kind of feel different from maybe versions that have already been out there?
• 7:47
  So we started kind of with a blank slate.
• 7:52
  It's very important to me that my actors get to build their own characters.
• 7:55
  So we didn't watch every episode of Hercule Poirot ever.
• 7:58
  I have watched a few because David Suchet is brilliant.
• 8:01
  But being able to kind of start clean and build the characters based on what we had in the script and how everybody was kind of relating to each other was really fun.
• 8:09
  Also, we had to build the train.
• 8:12
  Yes, can we talk about the train that you like what is what was that like to build a train?
• 8:16
  uh
• 8:18
  So, Stagecrafters' has a pretty large stage, but it has its limitations.
• 8:23
  So, approaching it, I also did the concept design for the set, because I really wanted to, was kind of important to me that it made sense to me how it was going to work.
• 8:33
  So, we start in Istanbul, in a restaurant, we go to the train station, we get on the train, we are...
• 8:42
  Mostly we're in a few people's ah sleeping compartments, like their own little personal cabins on the first class portion of the train.
• 8:50
  And we spend a lot of time in the dining car, ah sometimes in small groups, sometimes in large groups.
• 8:57
  So it's making it open, making it accessible to the audience so they can see and things people can move around, but also kind of keeping that gently claustrophobic sensation of
• 9:09
  being inside a train.
• 9:12
  We had to take some liberties for staging purposes because that is...
• 9:17
  We can't just hide everybody in the corner.
• 9:20
  People would be sad if they came to see the show and couldn't see anything.
• 9:24
  But for us, it ended up involving a lot of moving pieces.
• 9:28
  I have a fantastic lighting designer who I've worked with before who is just a genius.
• 9:32
  Our set-build team, we have a bunch of volunteers at Stagecrafters that has the scenic collaboration committee that they take the designs that they have and turn them into
• 9:41
  actual tangible built things.
• 9:42
  um
• 9:46
  the amount of people it takes to put something like this together and make it happen is always mind boggling to me.
• 9:51
  ah But it's also wonderful to have so many people involved in making this amazing.
• 9:56
  can only imagine too that it's, as a director, it could be difficult to make sure that, like a box car is only so big, but also you wanna make sure that it's engaging for
• 10:07
  audiences and having to find that balance of like, how do you make sure that it doesn't feel like you're just sitting and talking and actually, cause this show is very, it's a
• 10:16
  detective novel, it's a mystery novel, but it has a lot of tension in a movie, yeah.
• 10:20
  But like, but he also moves a lot too.
• 10:22
  does.
• 10:23
  And we actually, I'm working with also my sound designer.
• 10:25
  I say the word genius a lot, but the tech people I like to surround myself with are so good at what they do.
• 10:30
  We spent a lot of time developing a plan for ambient sound.
• 10:35
  So when the train is moving, the audience will very low key underneath everything hear noises that sound like they're on a moving train.
• 10:43
  When we're in Istanbul, you're going to hear some, some
• 10:46
  restaurant traffic and market noises and maybe some cool Middle Eastern music happening outside.
• 10:53
  Because at a certain point, it's snowing.
• 10:57
  And I will spoil one tiny thing, the train gets stuck.
• 11:01
  Sorry friends, if you haven't read the book of Stephen Hewley, the train does get stuck at one point because you're going through the mountains in the middle of Europe in winter in
• 11:07
  a snowstorm.
• 11:09
  And that was very common at the time.
• 11:12
  The amount of
• 11:15
  things that you're just used to when things are moving that don't happen when things aren't moving.
• 11:20
  We're really kind of trying to play with that and kind of immerse everyone in the feeling of being on a train, whether it's running or not, and kind of making very distinct choices
• 11:31
  to have small spaces or spaces that feel small to really kind of get that across without losing the theatricality of it.
• 11:40
  You know, we don't want to make it so no one can see anything ever.
• 11:43
  Right, but-
• 11:44
  of creating that space has been.
• 11:47
  love that you said too about the claustrophobia of it because as the show goes on, or the novel, you start to feel more more claustrophobic as he's kind of getting closer to the
• 11:57
  end, figuring out what's going on.
• 11:58
  feels small.
• 12:00
  It does.
• 12:00
  The whole thing just kind of shrinks and shrinks and shrinks.
• 12:04
  There's points where it's like, we're just hanging out, we're having a great time on the train, and then it's like we are all being interrogated in what used to be a dining room,
• 12:10
  and this feels weird.
• 12:11
  uh But I have...
• 12:15
  The actors have done a wonderful job with playing in smaller spaces and kind of restricting their movement, but not losing the whole point of the show.
• 12:25
  and doing very theatrical things in very tiny places.
• 12:29
  have say, that has to be such a challenge for actors again, because that stage is so big.
• 12:32
  And I'm sure some of them I'm thinking of like Frozen, which was like, it's huge and grand and people are moving.
• 12:37
  And then all of sudden you're like, and here's a boxcar.
• 12:39
  And like, you have to still be theatrical with inside of that.
• 12:42
  Yeah, we've taken a few liberties with dimensions, but we've also used a lot of pieces that fly in and out, and ways to kind of box things in or cut things off to kind of
• 12:55
  restrict.
• 12:55
  You can see, but it kind of restricts the space the actors have to do things in, which was a really cool challenge to do, to still make it fun to watch and engaging to watch, and
• 13:08
  still imply that we're all tucked into a tiny, place.
• 13:12
  Now you had mentioned for the actors, you really wanted them to help build their characters so that they feel natural in them as well.
• 13:19
  So when you're talking about lighting and sound design, which is the ambient sound sounds really cool, is this something that you go, this is my general idea, and you hand it over
• 13:27
  to them, you let them do it?
• 13:28
  What's your approach when you're building out the other aspects of a show, not just with the actors?
• 13:33
  So it's a team sport.
• 13:35
  uh I know what I don't know.
• 13:38
  I know what I'm looking for.
• 13:40
  And most of my production team, honestly, at point, are people I've worked with before who understand how I work.
• 13:45
  I give them a lot of license.
• 13:49
  we have, and the show is going up, we open on the 13th of February.
• 13:54
  I think we've been having meetings for a solid six to eight months on and off, developing all the behind the scenes stuff.
• 14:01
  Yeah, it's great.
• 14:02
  We usually get eight to 12 weeks to rehearse a show once we have a cast and audition.
• 14:06
  But all of the behind the scenes stuff, mean for me specifically and for a lot of other directors I know, starts months in advance.
• 14:12
  There's so much planning that needs to happen and design work and concepts.
• 14:16
  And hey, what's the audition?
• 14:17
  Tell me what you need because I can't just ask someone two weeks out like, hey, do this thing.
• 14:21
  And the director can do that.
• 14:22
  It's a lot of work.
• 14:24
  And they're all volunteers, which I, we all, of us do this for the money.
• 14:28
  We do it because we like to do it.
• 14:30
  It's for the passion.
• 14:32
  Yeah, it's really great.
• 14:34
  And as I say, really shows that I love those things.
• 14:38
  And granted, having been doing, being a journalist and a critic over here, I've been doing this forever.
• 14:42
  But I love those things that a lot of audiences don't think about.
• 14:45
  They're not even noticing, oh, that's the sound of wind blowing through a car that's not moving.
• 14:50
  But it does really, that could make or break a show in a way.
• 14:53
  Yeah, and just finding like little, I like to hide little Easter eggs in the set in places.
• 14:59
  The last show I did on the main stage here was Clue, and it wasn't a small Easter egg, but we did use a portrait of Tim Curry in one of the set pieces because he was the Wadsworth
• 15:08
  in the film version, and that's one of my favorite films.
• 15:11
  This one has a lot more subtle things that I'm not gonna talk about right now, but if you come to see the show, I'll be here, you can ask.
• 15:17
  Just little decorative choices and little things we've added in there very specifically.
• 15:22
  more for our own entertainment.
• 15:26
  We need to have a little like, uh I spy riddles in the book so that people can check them off as they figure it out.
• 15:31
  ah
• 15:34
  plank?
• 15:38
  so when you're kind of approaching the show as well for this production, was there a particular character relationship that you really wanted to highlight in a different way
• 15:44
  than maybe you have in different, like from the book or from the movies?
• 15:48
  So fundamentally it is a Hercule Poirot detective story.
• 15:52
  uh But I really wanted to give everyone a chance to be a fully developed character and to really kind of embrace what they were doing and just take their moment and shine.
• 16:01
  Because unlike some other of the detective things where there's like a very clear this is one person, this is the thing, this is the line that we're following, this one has such an
• 16:11
  assortment of folks.
• 16:14
  The book when everyone's getting on the trains.
• 16:17
  refers to every, so they're all characters.
• 16:19
  If I was Balzac, I'd put them in a novel.
• 16:21
  And I really wanted them to live up to that, being fully fledged, sometimes insanely complex characters.
• 16:29
  And some of them don't have a ton of stage time.
• 16:32
  But helping them make some really strong choices and decide to figure out together who they are and what they do.
• 16:40
  And everyone's got little tics and everyone's got their little behaviors and...
• 16:44
  Just kind of giving everyone the opportunity to be the star of their own show.
• 16:49
  I was gonna say, that there's ever, I know, there's no small parts and stuff, but there's some shows where you're like, you get to play the scrappy sidekick, but every one of
• 16:56
  these, no matter when they're on, they're all so important because without them, the chess game can't play.
• 17:00
  Right?
• 17:01
  And you never know, maybe this person that you've kind of just kind of, God, maybe they are the person, maybe they did the thing.
• 17:07
  Yeah, it's been really cool to just kind of spend time with everyone.
• 17:10
  We actually have, I hope I'm not counting wrong, they'll roast me later for it, but I think we have three people who this is the first time they've been on stage in a community
• 17:19
  theater production.
• 17:20
  And I have a couple of people who've been Stagecrafters members for decades who are also on stage in this production, who've done all of the things on stage, off stage.
• 17:29
  It's a really nice blend.
• 17:31
  It's a few people I've worked with before either as an actor or as a director, and it's bunch of people I've never worked with before, which is nice.
• 17:37
  good mixture.
• 17:38
  Yeah, just kind of making that environment where we can all just, I like to keep the play in play.
• 17:45
  Silly games, silly jests making fun of each other's accents occasionally is always a good idea.
• 17:51
  Absolutely.
• 17:51
  Keeps everybody on their toes too, you know?
• 17:53
  It does.
• 17:54
  It does.
• 17:54
  We should have fun.
• 17:55
  That's kind of the whole point is to have fun and make some art.
• 17:58
  it's kind of, it's worked out really well.
• 18:01
  You when I talked to you last time, you had mentioned about keeping the play in play for perfect arrangement.
• 18:06
  And when you saw that show, you really felt it because there was not just camaraderie, but there was just a level of being comfortable with each other and being like having fun,
• 18:14
  even when there were sometimes serious parts.
• 18:16
  And you could really feel that when you say that.
• 18:18
  was like, I can feel the play, the playfulness here in that play.
• 18:21
  And so I understand kind of like, I can only imagine how this is going to translate to Murder on the Orient Express.
• 18:26
  I'm excited for you to find out.
• 18:28
  There's parts of it that are just silly.
• 18:31
  I have seen this show build as a comedy.
• 18:33
  There are points of it that are very funny.
• 18:35
  There are points that there are obviously heavy jokes being made.
• 18:38
  And we've leaned into that in number of places because it can't just be murder, murder, death, Although I also did Clue here, so I'm developing a reputation for killing people on
• 18:48
  main stage.
• 18:50
  Well, but I'm not sorry.
• 18:52
  It's some really good stuff.
• 18:56
  No, it's just, you know, I want the audience to have a good time and to enjoy the show.
• 19:00
  But also to really think about it, because there's a lot of kind of heavy moral questionability that goes on throughout the show.
• 19:08
  There's a lot of conversations about what is justice, know, what is, when is it, when are we done, right?
• 19:15
  Who's actually good in this scenario?
• 19:18
  So it's a good one.
• 19:21
  It's juicy.
• 19:22
  It really is.
• 19:24
  Well, thank you so much for being here, Leta, It's been such a pleasure talking with you.
• 19:27
  And again, we're so excited to see this production.
• 19:30
  I cannot wait for everyone to see it.
• 19:32
  It's going to be phenomenal.
• 19:34
  uh Come see us.
• 19:37
  So Murder on the Orient Express arrives at Stagecrafters on February 13th and runs through March 1st.
• 19:41
  So get your tickets now and we'll see you at the show.
• 19:44
  Thank you.