On Thursday evening, Oct. 17, Mayers Auditorium grew lively with chatter as people began taking their seats, clutching red playbills in their hands. The stage before them was decorated with the theater performance’s set pieces, furniture and props harkening back to the early 1900s aesthetic. As the doors closed, the show began — the theater department’s first production of the season: “The Game’s Afoot.”
THE CAST EXPERIENCE
“The Game’s Afoot” by Ken Ludwig is a comedic murder mystery full of Shakespeare references, screaming, violence and, of course, murder. It follows William Gillette — a Broadway star and Sherlock Holmes fan — and his friends at one Christmas Eve party at William’s home, when one of the guests is suddenly stabbed to death. The evening of revelry quickly turns into frenzy and chaos as everyone wildly searches for the killer before things get even more out of hand.
Isaiah Lane, a senior theater major, was excited to play William Gillette in this show.
“Once they [Biola Theater] announced ‘The Game’s Afoot,’ I did some research on it, and I found it’s a farce comedy. And those are such fun shows to do. My very first show at Biola was a farce comedy,” Lane said. “Farces are very fast paced, over exaggerated, funny, [with] lots of twists and turns. And when I found out that Biola was doing another farce, I was like, ‘Okay, I gotta try get into this one.’”
When auditioning, Lane did not anticipate securing the lead role of William and initially aimed for the role of Simon Bright. Accustomed to playing younger characters around their 20s, Lane navigated around the challenge of playing a man in his 30s to 40s.
“When I got cast as Gillette, I was so excited, but that also made me realize I can still portray Gillette with my skill set and still utilize my experiences and take even a younger approach on him,” Lane said. “He’s witty, he’s a jokester. He loves pranking his friends, and that’s honestly how I am in real life. So I applied that kind of fun personality and playful humor into that character. And yeah, and then I had a fake mustache on, so that helped [make] me feel older too.”
Junior theater major Kaylin Kenders was also excited to participate in “The Game’s Afoot” and played the role of Daria Chase, a journalist and critic in the story.
“At first I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know how this will be, I didn’t know anything about the show,’” said Kenders. “But then I was also excited, because I hadn’t been able to do a straight comedic play before, and I’ve always wanted to do a murder mystery. And I also was excited because the theater program doesn’t get a lot of attention, and it can be really hard to market to people. But a comedy murder mystery is something that anyone can enjoy.”
WRESTLING WITH DARKNESS
Despite all the laughs this comedic play garners, there are still plenty of dark themes to wrestle with. Aside from the blood and murder, “The Game’s Afoot” also features cussing, crude jokes and a seance scene.
“Obviously, it’s like a light show and a comedic one, but even heavy things, like the seance scene, I know can be really uncomfortable,” Kenders said.
Kenders particularly felt hesitant at first, as her character Daria leads the seance in the play. But Kenders recalled how she and her fellow cast members lifted up their concerns to God, asking him to protect them during this scene in rehearsals.
“To communicate that and be able to establish as a cast from the very first table read, like, ‘Let’s pray over this scene in particular that we do it,’ and committing to that has been really nice, and I think it has made us feel really safe and comfortable,” Kenders said.
Lane especially feels blessed by the faith of the community participating in “The Game’s Afoot” in moments such as these, recalling specific moments where characters swear or use God’s name in vain.
“The cool thing about our team is, if you’re not comfortable with saying [curse words], or you feel like it compromises your morals, you can bring that to the director and she’ll let you change that,” Lane said. “Like there’s a line where I say ‘damn,’ and I switched to ‘dang’ because I didn’t want to curse. And I just think that’s also cool … if you stand up for your faith and what you believe in, God will bless you for it, and he’ll make a way when there’s no way.”
Kenders prays over any moment invoking God’s name in vain in her acting. She hopes that these moments inspire her to love God more.
“I just keep praying that it will evoke a stronger reverence for his name,” Kenders said.
IN FRIENDSHIP AND JOY
Even with a lot of darkness in the play, Lane admires the beautiful message of friendship that shines through.
“I think there’s such a beautiful moment at the end of the play [with] the characters [Gillette, Madge and Felix],” Lane said. “These characters just got done performing a huge play in New York. They just wrapped it up. They just finished, and they went through a ton of plot twists at their reunion during Christmas with, you know, murder mystery, ‘whodunit.’ But at the end of the day, those three stood together, and that was true friendship.”
The cast’s experience also embodies this theme of friendship. Lane and Kenders recall the times they formed prayer circles with the cast and crew, as well as many moments of playful banter with one another.
“For example, with [Isaiah], we’ve always had this strange banter of [pretending] to hate each other, and we’re always fake mean to each other. And so for this show, we’ve had this running bit of like, okay, we’re not going to be mean to each other. We’re just going to be nice to each other. And if anyone messes up on that, then they owe each other a 50-cent wing from Applebee’s,” Kenders said.
It’s moments like these that leave Kenders with a sense of joy as she reflects upon her time spent in this play.
“I think a lot of times I look for what the show means to me [spiritually], and what this says about God — and to me, for this show in particular, the word that comes to mind is just joy,” Kenders said. “[It’s] a fruit of the Spirit that I feel like I don’t think about as much, because it doesn’t feel as much like a virtue as patience or goodness, but it is. It’s such a beautiful characteristic of God that I feel we take for granted.”
Kenders and Lane hope that the audience comes away with this feeling of joy after watching “The Game’s Afoot,” just as it did for themselves, from their first time reading the script to the final curtain call.
