Trevor Schmidt is a city person, at least in terms of where he’d prefer to be murdered.
“People are like, oh, it’s so peaceful out here in the country, but I’m like, it’s murderville. To me, there’s nothing more terrifying than being alone in the country, because who can hear you when you scream for help? Nobody. I know there’s that thing in the cities where you scream for help and everyone can hear you and no one will come. But at least someone will hear you!”
Nobody hears the screams of the young women who go missing in Black Falls, the fictional town in Schmidt’s new play, at least not until the daughter of the town’s founding family goes missing too. At that point, law enforcement agencies and the media jump into action, because the person who went missing “matters.”
Candy and Kenny don’t matter — at least, the young siblings don’t feel like they matter living in a trailer park on the outskirts of the community. But they unofficially take on the case, in part to change the town’s — and their own — perspective on themselves.
“Kenny has gone through gonadotropic puberty, which means he’s gone through puberty early, and so he looks like an adult. And he’s sort of tormented by other kids in the community, who call him a beast. And he worries he might be what’s happening to these young women in town. And I think that Candy wants to make a point, that people will notice us, people will respect us, if we solve this crime that nobody else seems to be able to solve.”
Schmidt says the story doesn’t unfold in real time, the actors play different parts, and other characters are pre-recorded. Kenny makes up his own songs, and Schmidt says there are “some strange technical elements and unusual, experimental stuff” in the season-ending show of the theatre that always brings the wonderfully weird — and dark.
“It is not my personal experience that life is always good, and I like things that reflect that. So this season was all about the moon. And Candy and the Beast, they think the killer, whoever it is, might be a werewolf. So it’s a lot about the moon, and the moon’s influence on them — and the killer.”
Let Candy & the Beast influence you April 5 to 20.
