TAF 2016: The Murder Mystery

About the meaning of life, spiked chocolate bars and what happened on Honduras – A Murder Mystery with Trinity Arts Festival 2016 and DU Players

On Tuesday 24 February  the Trinity Arts Festival murder mystery tour organised by TAF in cooperation with DU Players started.

On the with moonlight illuminated stairs of the chapel eight DU Players introduced the audience to the plotline: A Salvadore Dalí with British accent – or rather his subconsciousness –revealed that he had discovered the meaning of life. Before elucidating said meaning, however, the famous artist collapsed stertorously.

The detective in charge strode over hurriedly to declare the collapsed dead. He then addressed the audience and requested them to find the culprit.  Suspects for the participating teams to question were, by the way also part of Dalí´s subconsciousness: the fiery Pablo Picasso, Willy Wonka, the relentlessly grinning Cheshire Cat, the mysterious Marina Abramovic, the Cat in the Hat, ethereal Yoko Ono and a Siegmund Freud with Russian accent. In their quest to capture the murderer teams spread over the campus and questioned the different suspects.

While Willy Wonka was more than happy to indulge his interrogators with finely embellished tales of the unnecessity to discover the meaning of life or of refining the taste of sweets with other, slightly illegal substances, Ms Abramovic proved to be a not too talkative interlocutor. Moreover, with each question the relationships between the characters and possible motives for murder got crazier and even more complex. What happened on Honduras? Pablo Picasso and Siegmund Freud are a couple? Yoko Ono has lost her cat, the Cheshire Cat? Is the rivalry between Cheshire Cat and the Cat in the Hat connected to the murder? Could Willy Wonka have killed Dalí with a poisoned chocolate bar?

Truly, the sufferings of a real investigator. The search for the murderer picked up pace when Yoko Ono sank to the floor with a suffocated cry in front of the Bell Tower. A second murder victim. At this point, the unremitting work and support of the detective in charge has to be praised: Being the first at the scene of the crime he expertly pronounced both victims dead by taking their pulse at a distance of one metre. Not forgetting his constant updates on clues – some more helpful some less.

So, whodunnit?

Once you eliminate the (im)possible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is most definitely the truth… Or something like that. Wasn´t that one of fiction´s greatest detective´s advice?! Trinity Arts Festival and DU Players´ Murder Mystery Tour certainly explored this concept extensively on that evening.

Photo by Manus Dennison