The Dreamers Ensemble will present a staged reading of “Murder for Dummies: A Murder Mystery Comedy” written by Benjamin Michaud this weekend at the Mariposa Museum.
“To call it a staged reading isn’t really doing it justice. There’s a set, there will be costumes, people will be up and moving around, and it’s going to be a lot of fun,” said Dreamers Ensemble founder Eve Pierce. “We play on a lot of murder mystery tropes, and it will be fun and goofy. We joke that ‘Agatha Christie will be rolling in her grave.'”
The show, a spoof on the classic murder mystery, will be performed at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 9 and Saturday, Jan. 10. Tickets will be available at the door of the museum, 26 Main St.
“The whole cast is having fun going to the limit of being ridiculous with this show,” Pierce said. “We’re really playing into the archetypes and stereotypes for murder mysteries — we have the femme fatale, angry wife, butler, the frat boy — the cast is taking it to the furthest realm of satire.”
“Murder for Dummies” is the ensemble’s first winter production. The company, which Pierce and friends from the ConVal theater department launched in 2023, has performed “The Importance of Being Earnest” in 2023 and “Alice in Wonderland” this past summer.
“The group wanted to do something completely unique and entirely new, and this show is totally new to us,” Pierce said. “It has just been really fun to exist in. It’s been for us all to play in this space.”
The story is set at “Black Whale Manor,” an old New England estate, where a formal dinner party is taking place.
“It’s your typical murder murder mystery: a rich businessman invites people to a dinner party, and not everyone leaves alive,” Pierce said. “Everyone is at each other’s throats.”
Michaud, a ConVal senior and 12-year veteran of Project Shakespeare, was inspired to write “Murder for Dummies” after ConVal performed Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” in 2022.
A version of “Dummies,” the first murder mystery theater production at ConVal to be written and directed by a ConVal student, was performed at the high school in November 2024.
Pierce and Michaud, who have known each other through theater since elementary school, reconnected through the ConVal theater department and started to talk about staging another production of “Murder.”
“Ben and I were chatting, and I was saying how I always wanted the Dreamers to be a group where people bring in their original work and we workshop it. It seemed like the perfect place to stage Ben’s work,” Pierce said. “It was like, ‘Hey, you’re cool and you have this script you want to keep workshopping it — let’s team up and work together.’ “
According to Pierce, this production of “Murder for Dummies” will take the show to a more adult level. Previously, the company has performed all-ages shows.
“We did ‘Earnest,’ which was for everyone, and we did ‘Alice’ specifically for everyone — you could bring the kids, or you could go with adult friends,” Pierce said. “When Ben did ‘Murder’ at ConVal, the show had to be school-appropriate, but with the Dreamers, I was like well, now we have an adult cast — let’s play around with that fact, and let’s try to really see what we can do. It’s a different environment. It’s been fun for us to do a spicier show, a little but more adult. There is language, and people do get killed on stage.”
According to Pierce, in this performance of “Murder,” the cast will sit facing the audience and be “fully acting their roles.”
“It will look like they are at the fancy dinner party, they are in full costume, they will do some blocking. It’s kind of a very glamorized stage reading. We wanted to present the work and use our rehearsal time to work with Ben on the script,” Pierce said. “I wanted to get across the energy of this script. It has a lot of really great chaotic energy, and we wanted show that as well.”
Pierce says the performance will be different from ConVal production in 2024.
“There have been some major changes. Edits started being made a few months ago, we have been tweaking stuff, some character relationships have changed — it’s really a whole new edition of the play,” Pierce said. “Ben went back and re-read his original draft and changed it a lot. We’ve been able to really flesh out the performances and the characters and go crazy with it, and it’s been a very fun process.”
Unlike with the ConVal production, which he directed, Michaud also plays a role in this version of “Murder.”
“Ben is really bringing his role to life. It has been really cool to watch him play around with the role he created; he knows this character so well,” Pierce said. “It’s an ensemble cast of suspects and detectives, and they’re all strong roles. Ben gets to go totally wild — he gets to be absolutely ridiculous.”
After they wrap “Murder,” the Dreamers Ensemble will start choosing a show for summer 2026.
“I have some ideas I’m really excited about. We’ll see,” Pierce said.
The Peterborough-based Dreamers Ensemble can be found on Facebook and Instagram.