- Will you consider this?

If you've ever played Clue, you get the picture.

I'm Christine Zak-Edmonds and we find ourselves being super sleuths coming up.

(upbeat music) If you're one of those putting together all the whodunit questions and answers, then you have probably been to a Murder Mystery Dinner, maybe two.

Becky Cassidy is behind the storylines at Die Laughing Entertainment and joins us now.

Welcome Becky!

- Hi!

- Okay so, this is very different for you because your professional career, your career for a long time was at Caterpillar in the finance department, all left-brain stuff.

- Yes, 41 years of sitting at a desk and working with numbers and people around the world which was fun.

But yeah, this is my for fun after retirement job.

- But did you start it while you were still at the company just thinking about it or?

- Well, actually, my boyfriend, Tom Houston and I attended one.

And over in Morton, it was put on by a group outta Champagne Urbana.

And we kinda got involved as audience participation parts.

And they invited us to join their group which was all volunteer, to raise money for a theater down there.

So we did some on the Spirit of Peoria with them and a few around the area.

And we did that for a couple of years before I retired.

And so, as I was nearing retirement I thought, "You know, there's nobody in Peoria doing this," and they had trouble getting volunteers to drive up here all the time, bad weather and stuff.

So I decided to start our own company.

And instead of recruiting volunteers, I pay our cast.

So I can be more selective on casting the roles and such.

- Right, but not all of 'em are paid because many of 'em that are fundraisers, you don't pay the cast members.

- Exactly, we do a lot of fundraisers and all of us do that as volunteers.

We take no pay for that, so.

- So there is a Mystery Writers of America that, I'm reading off of one of these little things here, that you attend occasionally.

- Yes, Tom and I went to one in Chicago.

It was pre-COVID.

They haven't had one in the last two to three years, obviously.

Went to that, they brought in writers from all around the world.

There were a couple of ladies there from the UK, somebody else from Germany.

Most of 'em from the U.S. and it's a two-day conference and they take turns talking and they tell about how they got started, what type of murder mysteries they write.

One was a retired police officer and hers are all true crime stories.

- [Christine] Okay.

- Whereas others were fiction and it was just real interesting.

Of course, they sold their books afterwards and you got to talk with 'em one-on-one.

So we went to that because I write all of our materials.

I don't buy 'em online or anything like that.

I write 'em.

- You get your ideas from some that they have done, or where did those ideas come from?

- Well, not really from that.

I'm addicted to crime TV, the ID channel, Dateline, 48 Hours and so forth.

I just got an idea of a creative way to kill somebody on 48 Hours that was on one night last week so (chuckles).

So yes, that and then just a lot of Google searching and reading up on stuff.

I just have always been into all the mystery-type things, so.

- Just forever?

- [Becky] Oh, for a long time, for a long time, yes.

- That's just crazy.

- Yes, I've watched, like I said the 48 Hours, 20/20, Dateline, those type of shows for as long as I can remember along with a whole slew of different ones on- - Have you ever known who done it then when you watch those before they get the answers or?

- Well, no but- - You got your suspicions?

- Well, sometimes.

Sometimes, yes.

But we've traveled around the country actually, and gone to a lot of different murder mysteries also, because no two are alike.

Different groups do 'em differently.

Some do 'em in sets in between the courses of the dinner and so forth.

Some like us, do 'em for... We have a one-hour cast mingle right when the door's open and before dinner's served where we're interacting with the guest one-on-one.

And then, throughout while they're eating, the cast is still in character and there's all kinds of mayhem and drama while the guests are eating but somebody's going to meet their demise before dessert.

That's kinda the joke.

- And if you let's say, and I know you've done this, you've just sort of tweaked some of the mysteries where a different person gets killed.

So it might be kind of the same plot to begin with, but you've switched up who's gonna- - [Becky] Exactly.

- Meet their Maker.

- That way we can reuse 'em.

I mean, we don't reuse 'em a lot.

But once every three years like our Irish Wake, we've done that three different years in a row.

But every time it's a little bit different.

So the guests that are coming, they may think you know, well, some people might- - [Christine] I know it, right.

- You know, think, "Oh, I already know how this one goes," and I let everybody know ahead of time, the ending is gonna be different.

The plot is the same up to who does it and who gets it.

(Becky chuckling) - Yeah.

So people are finding out about you after, how many years have you been doing this?

- We've been doing this since 2015.

The end of 2015, right before I retired.

But yeah, word keeps spreading.

I mean, we pick up new followers every event we do.

I have a Facebook page with, I don't know what we're up to on that as far as followers.

And we also have an email contact list which people can give us their email address at one of our events and get added.

And I have over 600 people on that.

And every time somebody comes, they bring new people with 'em or new people see it pop up on Facebook or something.

- So how many shows do you think you done, shows, mystery dinners do you do a year?

- Well, in a year we usually do about eight a year.

We kinda have a season that runs along with the school year.

- [Christine] Okay.

- We don't do too many in the summer other than maybe private ones.

Sometimes, somebody'll ask us to do a private one or a fundraiser.

But indoor events aren't real popular in the summer, we found out.

For 10 years, I was the Chair for Taste of Peoria on the RiverFront.

I know during the summer there's something every weekend, a festival or something.

And people are wanting to do outside things.

- [Christine] Right.

- So we kinda steer away from the summer months and pick up usually the end of August, early September and then run through about early May.

- So what are some of your plots?

What are the most fun plots for you to be writing and sitting there?

- Well, holiday times are always real popular.

And most of our events are sold out.

When we did The Irish Wake in March, that one is always sold out within two or three weeks.

We have an ugly sweater party that we do between Thanksgiving and Christmas at at least twice at different places.

That one is always sold out.

And Halloween, Halloween of course, is the most popular time I have to- - [Christine] And a lot of the guests come dressed too.

- Yes, and we invite all of ours that have a theme.

We invite the guests to dress with the theme.

It's not mandatory but it makes it more fun.

And at Christmas time when we do the ugly sweater or at Halloween, when we do the costume party one, and I have three different ones for that.

But they're all based around a costume party.

And then, we always have a contest too.

So a guest wins a prize for... And the audience votes which costume they like the best.

The same at Christmas with the ugly sweater, so.

But we have some like Mulligan's Island, which is built around Gilligan's Island.

And even at that one, I mean, we're all dressed according to our character, but a lot of the audience comes dressed.

We have a lot of Mary Anne's and Ginger's at those.

And the Irish Wake, you know, they wear their green Irish attire and we always have green beads that we give 'em and stuff like that, so.

- And sometimes you have some plants in the audience.

- Yes.

I almost always have audience roles available for people.

And when we see, cue in on somebody that is being real active, I mean, sometimes people walk in with a notepad and a pen in their hand.

- [Christine] And they're serious.

- That's somebody that's been to one before and knows how it works.

And we usually grab 'em, pull 'em aside and ask if they would like a part.

But we've also found a lot of people just kind of assign their own part and go with the flow.

We had one where a gal insisted that she had dated one of the characters in high school and we even thought she was serious.

And we went over and asked him.

He says, "No, I don't know her."

And we realized then that she was just throwing herself into it.

So that always makes it a lot of fun too.

- Right, well, full disclosure I've been in a couple.

- [Becky] Yes.

- The first one I blew it.

(Becky chuckles) I died twice (chuckles).

But now I know.

But it's so much fun.

What is your biggest challenge when you're rewriting or trying to switch up your plots a little bit?

- Well, it's not really a challenge because when I write 'em initially, I intentionally make it so each one...

There's always six to eight characters in all of ours.

And of course, one of 'em is gonna be the murderer and one of 'em is gonna die.

But we've even had a couple where we had two people get killed.

And we've had, where we've had two murderers that work together.

So, always like to throw the audience a curve ball.

Especially though, we have a lot of regulars that come to every one.

So I don't want 'em to kinda think they got it down pat.

And so occasionally, I have had the bartender that worked at the venue, was a murderer or worked along with one of the cast people.

And that throws 'em.

So they kinda know, you know, expect the unexpected, I guess so.

- [Christine] Yeah well, and that's kinda fun.

- But to change up the end, isn't really a problem because all of the characters have a motive to make 'em a suspect.

So all I have to do is change their motive a little bit and throw it on to somebody else that I'm gonna make be the victim.

So yeah, it's not that hard.

- Well, do you lose sleep over any of these or are you dreaming about it in the middle of the night and you get up and go, "Okay"?

- Sometimes I wake up with an idea.

I do have dreams of something because I watch something on TV earlier in the day.

And so yeah, there have been a couple of times.

But I don't lose sleep over 'em.

Maybe I get a little stressed.

We've had a couple of real big ones for an audience of 250 or something.

And those stress me a little bit 'cause I'm kind of a...

I don't know what term, not a micromanager.

- Not exactly, yeah not a control freak, but.

- But yeah I- - But it's your work.

- Yeah.

And I'm just concerned that everything's gonna go off right, you know and everything but it always does.

We don't have scripts that you have to memorize lines for.

The cast members, I write a story plot that is just 30, 35 pages long, a couple pages for each character of how they interact with each other, what they might know, what's going to be revealed.

And so, that's the only thing I probably stress a little bit about is, making sure that everybody reveals- - [Christine] Know who's who and how it works.

- Yeah and in the right sequence.

And for that reason after the first year, I quit casting myself in one of the roles I used to have a role.

And now, I prefer to stand over to the side and kinda watch and make sure everybody is getting the reveals out that they need to.

And that gives me the opportunity to kinda walk by and brush 'em and whisper something, you know?

And I also watch the guest plates.

As the plates are starting to get empty, that's the time for the victim to make their dramatic choking on the poison or whatever it be as they are walking out of the room.

So, that way I can stand back and watch and cue that person, "Time to go."

- It's time, yeah.

And then that person goes off and does whatever?

- Yeah, we usually have a green room or something in the back assigned.

And as soon as they start gasping and carrying on, the rest of the cast runs to their aid and escorts them out.

We don't have 'em killed down on the floor and get carried out.

We've done that before when we were volunteering with the other group and it can be kinda hard to carry people out.

(Becky chuckling) Risk somebody getting hurt.

So no, we have them gasping and we kinda help drag them out and then we come running back in and somebody screams, you know, "Oh my God, she's dead, she's dead," and so forth.

And then we launch right into a preliminary investigation where we have the audience present us with any clues they saw or overheard.

The suspects all have tables around the perimeter of the room.

We used to table-hop with the guests prior to COVID.

We quit doing that.

We don't sit down and eat or sit at their tables.

We now have tables assigned on the perimeter of the room and I put table tents up with the suspect's name.

And then the female suspects have a purse.

And the props, items in the purse are all strewn out.

The guys just have items that were supposedly in their pockets or something.

And the guests are told about that ahead of time so they can go around during the cast mingle and take pictures or take notes of what's on the table.

- Or dig in to the purses and everything.

I mean, they really get- - [Becky] Oh, they do, they do, yeah (chuckles).

- Yeah, I found it 'cause you know, in the day when you could leave your purse on the table be like, I'd see them just rummaging through and oh my!

- Yeah, they're not shy once they realize.

At first, some are like, "Oh, I can't go through that purse!"

Once we assure them and it says on the back of the program that the items left behind at a table or whatever, are props.

- [Christine] Gloves are off.

- And we expect 'em to go through it.

We had a prop in a violin case, a machine gun and a letter.

The letter was a very strong clue and I didn't have it at one of the suspect's tables because we didn't wanna point to who it belonged to.

So instead, we had it sitting by, I have a photo screen for people to stand in front of it, so suspects and it's got the lines like and for their height and they can stand and everybody goes over and stands and takes their picture.

I spend a half hour standing there taking pictures of couples for them.

- [Christine] With their phones.

- And I had it sitting right there, right next to it.

And nobody opened it at the last one.

So finally, I walked over to the people singing at the table and I said, "Have you noticed, has anybody opened that violin case?"

It was even unzipped.

All they had to do is lift lid.

And he says, "No, why are we supposed to?"

And right away, one of the guys at the table jumped up and ran over there and he goes (gaps), "There's a letter!"

Grabbed it and took it back to his table to read it and stuff.

And I said, "Please present that during the investigation that's gonna happen in a little while."

- Yeah, and sometimes you are Jessica Fletcher too?

You do the wrap up at the end.

- Yes, the investigation.

Yeah, sometimes I do.

Sometimes it's one of the people in the cast, depending on the characters.

But a lot of times I am the investigator at the very end.

I've been Jessica Fletcher.

Tom and I have been Kate Beckett and Rick Castle and different characters like that.

I have a Sherlock Holmes hat and the pipe and stuff.

Sometimes we recruit somebody from the audience and ask 'em if they would help us with the investigation.

And when somebody volunteers, we ask them to come up so we can brief them.

- Okay.

- And I have a big pair of mens' tighty-whities and we make them put 'em on and now they've been briefed.

So all of our murder mysteries I should add, are comedic.

Yeah, they're not serious.

There's no gunshots, no blood and gore or anything.

Everything is rated PG-13.

I have one that was written for a private birthday party and they had some request, it's more of an R-rated but it was for a private event.

- [Christine] Right.

- We don't ever do anything like that for public.

And we have had kids, Adam, we have families come.

We had one couple, came and brought their daughter for her birthday and some of her friends for her birthday party.

- [Christine] Well, that would be fun.

- And those kids are the best.

I mean, they really get into it and they follow the cast around.

I mean, you can hardly shake 'em (laughs) so.

- So you're really enjoying it?

- [Becky] Yeah.

- And you plan to continue this for however long you can?

- I do, unless Tom decides to retire from his job and we decide to- - [Christine] Travel a lot?

- Leave (chuckles), yeah.

- Might be able to find somebody.

But the winners, the people who guess things, they get, you know, a special little.

- [Becky] A Die Laughing coffee mug, yeah.

- Yes, with Death's Door Coffee in it (chuckles).

- And sometimes depending on the event too, we have bottles of wine we give sometimes too.

And your mug actually, on the other side says, "Coffee makes me less murder-y."

- Yeah.

- And then, this is our old one.

It says, "It was a dinner to die for.

And I solved the murder."

But we do have bottles of wine 'cause we do travel a lot and we go to wineries and we've found a couple wineries over in Iowa that have some interesting labels.

They're appropriate for the event.

We have found wines that have 'ugly sweater' on the front of 'em.

And so, we give one of those at Christmas.

Now for St. Patrick's day, we usually give a bottle of Irish cream or something like that to go in the coffee, so.

- Well, and you have all different kinds of costumes and props that you help some of your characters with, if they can't come up with things?

- Yes I do.

I now have a costume room at my house.

One of my spare bedrooms has become my Die Laughing room.

And I have two big racks full of costumes, I have- - [Christine] And props.

- A couple of armoires with props and stuff in 'em.

So I have everything they could imagine to help 'em out.

I'm always Goodwill shopping and adding to my things.

But we've also found Peoria Players great to work with.

They rent costumes and accessories.

One of the gals at our roaring twenties-themed one, rented an outfit from Peoria Players, so.

And then, Steve Spain with his costume trunk has a lot of things up there too, so.

- Yep, we've got it all.

What out of all of the different... How many have you written so far?

Do you know?

- I think I have 17 or 18 done right now.

I have about six that I have titles and outlines for that I just haven't had time to sit down and write out all the details.

But every now and then, a title comes to mind.

I think, "Oh, that'd be a good title!"

Now, I just have to write the story to go with the title.

- And you have some fun character names with each one of your...

So explain a little bit about that.

- We have both an Irish Wake and the Irish Wedding.

So of course, those are all Irish names.

Actually in our Irish Wake, we have a journalist and it can be a female or a male.

Most recently it was a female.

But her name is Lucky Luciano.

- [Christine] Okay.

(women laughing) - Because the Luciano name is very Italian gangster-sounding, so.

But we've had some with... Well, couple of the names maybe, are a little questionable.

- [Christine] You don't wanna talk about those.

(Becky chuckling) - But yeah, we do have an idea of customizing one.

We did a private event for a Catholic church over in Morton.

And they liked our backyard neighborhood barbecue theme.

But they had a theme for their annual festival of just '50s.

- Okay.

- Nothing beyond that just, it was gonna be a '50s theme.

So I customized our neighborhood barbecue and it was "No More Happy Days" at the '50s barbecue.

- Right.

- And so, since it was '50s we had well, Rizo.

And, I can't remember all the names right now.

But yeah, it was all characters from "Laverne & Shirley" were there and- - Fonzie?

- Rizo and Sandy.

And Sandy had two sides, good Sandy and bad Sandy.

- Okay yeah.

Right shoulder, good angel, bad angel, yeah.

- Yeah, so and of course we had "The Fonze" and some of the guys too.

- Right, right.

So you really are having a lot of fun with this?

- We are, we are.

And we're always looking for new people to add- - [Christine] Actors, performers, right?

- To our group because we've been around for a while and we've got a few that, well, I had a couple guys that were in their mid-thirties that worked at CAT and ended up moving with their job outta state.

So I'm always looking to kinda fill somebody that has had to drop out for various reasons.

And also, because I try to cast according to character, so I need different ages, you know?

Can't all be my age (laughs).

- Right, yeah, well.

- So.

- They can't all be retired.

- Yeah, and so, and we found a lot of the people that work with some of the local theater groups, they're real busy as you know.

You've been tied up and couldn't help with some of 'em too.

So yeah, anytime that at our events, if somebody expresses interest, they can give me their email address and I get hold of 'em and give 'em all the information and stuff.

Or I always tell people, "If anybody's watching this and says, 'Oh, I'd like to do that' send me an email."

- [Christine] And you found some people that way?

- Yeah, yeah.

- So where can they find you and find more information about any upcoming events, you know?

- All of that is on, we have a Facebook page Die Laughing Entertainment.

And then my email address, which is die_laughing_entertainment, but I have underscores in between each of the words.

So it's die, underscore, laughing, underscore, entertainment, underscore or entertainment@yahoo.com.

- [Christine] Okay.

- So I'm pretty easy to find.

If they do a Google search for Die Laughing Entertainment, something's gonna pop up, so.

- There's nobody else named that in the country that you know of.

- Nope, I'm registered with the...

In the country, there is.

Actually, there is a group over in Iowa but not in the state of Illinois.

Definitely not in Peoria, so I'm registered as a LLC with the state.

So, it's all legit.

Of course, a lot of our events that are being put where we're hired by a venue, they of course always have it on their website and Facebook pages as well.

Some of 'em are even sometimes put in a newspaper.

But we've done 'em at a lot of events like Tres Rojas Winery in Washington and at the Peoria Zoo.

Barracks Cater Inn does a lot of 'em at his East Port location or out on Pioneer Parkway.

And they always promote it also, so.

- Yeah, and the food's good.

- Yeah, yeah.

We haven't had any complaints on food at any of our venues yet, so.

- Well, that's so much fun.

Becky ,thanks for being with us and sharing your story and- - Thank you.

- And if anybody's got ideas for you, you know, put a couple ideas in your head if they wanna be actors, same thing, performers.

- Yep, absolutely.

Sounds good!

- Perfect.

Okay, thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- I enjoyed it.

Enjoyed seeing you again.

I hope you enjoyed it too.

And give Die Laughing Entertainment a try.

Stay safe and healthy.

(upbeat music)