‘Murder at the Auction’ to fund scholarships for Creston YMCA

The Supertel Inn and Conference Center will be wrapped up in mystery on Feb. 7, and the sleuth who solves the case could be you.

The event, titled “Murder at the Auction,” will benefit the Southern Prairie YMCA’s scholarship fund, which helps provide Y memberships to people and families who can’t afford them on their own.

Beginning at 5 p.m., activities will include a dinner catered by Upper Crust, a cash bar, an auction and an evening-long audience-participation murder mystery produced by members of the Southwestern Community College Drama Club. As the night progresses, guests will attempt to unravel the clues of who the murderer—or will it be murderers?—really are.

Kelly Franklin, SWCC Drama Club adviser, said the club will begin the act as soon as the evening starts.

“We will all be getting there about the same time everybody else is, and we will be letting things slip about our characters,” Franklin said.

The characters will continue to mingle with the guests through dinner, and Franklin said these conversations will provide tidbits of information that are key to unravelling the motive behind the murder of one of the characters, which will take place after dinner. Then, led by a character playing an inspector, the audience will begin cracking the clues and cornering the culprit.

During the auction at the end of the night, the audience will submit their theories on who committed the crime, and those who guess correctly will be put in a drawing for a gift basket.

Franklin said the Drama Club designed the evening’s mystery themselves, and the creativity and improvisation of a performance like this is a welcome change of pace for the students, who usually must fit into pre-written roles. The mystery is also fun because of the improvisational element involved, Franklin said, which makes no two practices exactly alike.

“There’s no written script,” she said. “The play evolves as to how the audience reacts to it. We have a plot that we’ve designed, and we just kind of let it go.”

Jacki Steffen, the Y’s executive director, said the idea for a murder mystery dinner rose from the desire to do something unique for a beginning-of-the-year fundraiser. This will be one of the year’s large events in funding the Y’s scholarship fund, which Steffen said meets an ever-growing need in the community.

“Our mission has been over time to not turn away anybody for the inability to pay,” Steffen said.

Last year, the Y gave out $60,000 in scholarships, and Steffen said she is hoping to raise $20,000 to $25,000 for the fund through the ticket sales and auction.

Items up for auction include Y memberships, handmade quilts, food packages, travel packages and many more items provided or sponsored by local businesses. The final three items up for auction will be “mystery boxes,” with each holding one of three prizes: an iPad MIni, a 32” LED TV or a Perry getaway package.

Tickets are $35 and can be purchased at the Y prior to the event.