NTPA Collegiate Pursuits gives audiences a chance to write their own ending in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”

North Texas Performing Arts (NTPA) Collegiate Pursuits wants your vote this election season. Instead of voting on political candidates, however, the theater program wants its audiences to vote each night to determine one of around 480 different combinations of endings to its upcoming production of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” running August 30 – September 7 at Plano’s Courtyard Theater.

“The Mystery of Edwin Drood” is a musical comedy whodunit based on Charles Dickens’ last novel. Dickens only had the chance to write six of 12 planned installments of the book before he died. Since the author never finished the story, the show asks audiences to determine who among its colorful cast of Victorian characters murdered the young Edwin Drood, with the results of their votes unfolding right before their eyes.

Considering the portion Dickens wrote takes audiences up through about a quarter of the production’s second act, that’s not all audiences get to choose during this heavily interactive show either. NTPA Collegiate Pursuits Artistic Director Bethany Bourland explains that audiences will also vote on the identity of the show’s mysterious detective and which two characters become lovers. She adds that there are “about 30 different scenes” that could happen when audiences choose the lovers alone, requiring the actors to learn different endings to prepare for each possible combination of characters to receive the winning vote.

“It’s quite a monster, but it has been so fun,” NTPA Collegiate Pursuits Program Director Kameron Knott says of working on the show. He says the show is both a “massive vocal undertaking” from a musical standpoint and a “large physical comedy.” On top of that, it includes classic and contemporary dance sequences like an “almost six-minute ballet in the middle of the first act” as part of a dream sequence.

All those different elements make for quite the undertaking for the young cast of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” The NTPA Collegiate Pursuits program stars 10th through 12th grade theater students looking to prepare for their college careers.

Even at such a young age, Knott and Bourland emphasize how thoroughly impressed they have been by the cast’s abilities to handle the show’s complicated material throughout the rehearsal process. “The students that we work with love to rise to the occasion, and they love something that they know is difficult,” Bourland says. “It’s almost like the harder something is, the more excited they are for it.”

“The Mystery of Edwin Drood” takes place as a musical-within-a-musical at the Music Hall Royale in 1896. “During the show, the actors pop in and out of their Dickens characters,” Bourland says, describing how each actor must learn how to play their character within the show and the actor who plays that character at Music Hall Royale. The production’s scenic designers, Melissa Winton and Fritz Wichern, have even designed a stage on top of the existing Courtyard Theater stage, complete with box seats, backdrops and curtains, to drive home the theme. “Scenes happen on the stage and then pull down off onto the apron of the real stage,” Bourland says.

Bourland explains that the duality of the show creates another layer of audience participation to the show. “There’s a lot of asking the audience to cheer for you and asking for specific responses from the audience,” Bourland says. “How the audience responds determines what lines they say some of the time.”

In other words, Bourland and Knott haven’t cut corners on “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” for its student cast. It’s a sign of their belief in their students’ abilities to tackle all the challenges the show throws at them. “We work with 10th through 12th graders who want this to be their career…and so they’re approaching the material with the work ethic of ‘I know this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, so how do I learn how to do it now?’” Knott says. “That is so rewarding for two professionals in the industry to be able to work with students who are going to have the same artistic integrity that we have.”

Bourland says she hopes the show acts as both an entertaining musical comedy escape filled with audience participation as well as a showcase of the NTPA Collegiate Pursuits students’ talents. “Our desire is when the audience is watching the show, they are not thinking, ‘What a good high school performance.’ They’re enjoying their time, regardless of the age of the people onstage, because the quality that the high schoolers are able to bring is phenomenal,” Bourland says. “I think that’s really special, and I think the students that we work with have absolutely earned that.”

The NTPA Collegiate Pursuits production of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” runs from August 30 – September 7 at Courtyard Theater in Plano. For more information, including how to purchase tickets, visit https://ntpa.org/event/mystery-of-edwin-drood/.

These interviews were edited for clarity.