Woman's Club of Fairmont hosts first murder mystery dinner
Oct. 26—FAIRMONT — The Woman's Club of Fairmont is hosting its first Murder Mystery Dinner at the Elks Lodge on Saturday. Celi Oliveto, director of the Theater program at North Marion High, will direct students from the school in a play written by Assistant Director Colton Daft.
"We had earlier in the summer talked about wanting to do a murder mystery dinner of some sort," Julie Chadwell, the club's vice president of membership and chair of the event. "The North Marion High School Theater program was running the Little Mermaid all summer. I happen to be friends with the teacher, so I contacted her and she already had a script made up for a murder mystery that they were going to use for somebody else but got canceled. So we ended up using them and wanting them to do the performance and wanting to benefit them in the fine arts and theater departments."
Chadwell had her own experience with a murder mystery type show at the Stonewall Resort in Roanoke, West Virginia before COVID. The experience never left her and she wanted to bring the same type of entertainment to Fairmont. She said that as much as the club likes to support different nonprofits with bingo and elimination dinners, they were also interested in coming up with something different for people to attend as a fundraiser.
Daft said his script will throw several curveballs to the audience. It's a script he wrote last year for a Valentine's Day event, but he updated it for the murder mystery dinner, changed the ending, added new murderers and different characters. There's three murders and two murderers. Daft promised it'll be a lot of fun.
"Our kids have a blast with this, they've actually only been working on the show for about two weeks," Daft said. "It was a very short rehearsal process. So they've put a ton of time and effort into it and it's just to support, the young people and what they love doing."
Daft emphasized how important it is to support the arts, especially in an area where they don't see a lot of support.
Tickets are $40 each to cover the show and dinner. However, the show is already sold out of the 200 available tickets. Part of the proceeds of the show will go directly to help fund the school's theater department.
"We spent around $11,000 on our last production," Oliveto said. "Donations are always appreciated for this program. We try to make sure that the money that we're given is used responsibly. It's all used for the students. And we want to make sure that our students are in the community."
Oliveto said she never turns away any student who wants to be a part of a school production. Consequently, production costs can balloon. For that reason, theater students raise money in order to fund their shows. Oliveto also does her best to provide her students with the opportunity to travel while they're in school. The program is part of the West Virginia Theater Organization and the International Thespian Society, which hold competitions in December and January. The state competition follows in March.
There is an international competition that will take place in Edinburgh, Scotland, which she said looks pricey but amazing. She hopes to raise enough money to take her students there as well.
"They have 25,000 performances over three months, of any type," she said. "They've got juggling, tap dancing, opera, straight plays. Any type of performance, you could imagine they have at this festival so it'd be really great to work towards that goal of getting our students to be a part of that global experience. They have an American high school play festival there. I'd really like my students to be able to get to do that and see all the stuff that's at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival."
That said, ensuring every student has a chance to participate in the base high school theater experience is most important above all, even taking precedence over a cool trip to Scotland. It's part of the duty of a public school, to provide every student with that ground level experience. She said that's why community support is important, so that she can take the students who want in, while still being able to do the cool thing.
"I don't think we at this program, we've never not cast a student in a production," she said. "We've always let them attempt the production and then given them a shot at doing it. We want to keep doing that."
Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com
