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The YBI fundraiser was a hair raiser
YOUNGSTOWN
The basement of the former Vindicator building, with its concrete floor and pipes and valves exposed, was the perfect venue for two interactive murder-mystery plays Saturday that let the audience pick the guilty character.
“Head Games,” staged by the Rust Belt Theater Co. and written by its executive director, Robert Joki, in the Steampunk genre, was a fundraiser for the Youngstown Business Incubator, which now owns the building.
The YBI is a nonprofit corporation that aids in the growth of businesses and technologies. This year, it purchased the former Vindicator building, at Vindicator Square and Boardman Street, for its fifth building on its downtown campus.
The first play, “Head Games, ” involved Mirabella Van Crouton and several relatives she invited to hear the reading of her father’s will, all hoping to benefit.
As background, information the audience did not have, Mirabella is an only child who did not have a good relationship with her parents. She first beheaded her mother, believing her father would then turn to her. But, when he instead took up drinking and womanizing, she beheaded him also.
Before the play ended, three of the players were dead, two by poison and one by stabbing, and the audience was left to vote for the culprit.
Amos Haynes and Shelby Johnson, both Youngstown State University students, neither of whom had seen a murder-mystery before, were at the event courtesy of tickets Johnson won at a Quarter Auction at YSU.
After it concluded, she said she and Haynes both guessed the murderer correctly.
“It was very cool,” she said.
Youngstown Police Detective Sgt. Patricia Garcar, dressed in a Victorian-style costume, said that being a detective, she wanted to see if she could solve the murder.
“It’s a challenge,” she said before the play, but admitted afterward she had picked the wrong character as the killer.
Paul Luchette of Kent, and his wife, Ludmila, and daughter, Katya, 11, correctly picked the culprit.
“It was fun ... something different,” said Luchette, who is with AlphaMicron, one of the event’s sponsors. AlphaMicron is a spinoff of the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University.
Many people who have toured the building since the YBI takeover commented that it would be an ideal location for a murder-mystery event, said Colleen Kelly, director of development for YBI.
The idea grew, Kelly contacted Joki, and the idea became a reality.
“We love doing theater in unexpected places. It challenges our actors and gives the audience a one-of-a-kind experience. In creating this show for YBI, our aim was to give the attendees an evening they will never forget,” said Joki.