After multiple sell-out runs and a string of awards, CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation is bringing its unique blend of comedy and murder mystery to Underbelly Boulevard Soho as part of the Fringe Fix Festival. No two performances are ever the same, with every twist, suspect and clue created live on stage.
Co-creator and performer Sarah Kempton has been at the heart of the show’s success, helping to create an improvised theatrical experience where even the cast have no idea who the killer will be. The result is a fast-paced comedy that puts audiences firmly in the detective’s seat.
CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation plays Underbelly Boulevard Soho on Friday 18 September at 9.30pm. Tickets are available here.
You’re starring in CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation at Underbelly Boulevard Soho. What can you tell us about the show?
We are a comedy murder mystery show created in front of your very eyes based on your suggestions! Each show is completely unique, and completely hilarious.
CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation has been entertaining audiences for more than 12 years. What do you think has made the show such an enduring success?
I think it’s us as a team… isn’t that the most sugary sweet answer ever?!
With improv, the team bond and dynamic are so important. We all genuinely enjoy performing with each other and entertaining each other. The audience can feel that, and they’re invited to be part of it with the suggestions they give us for the show.
There’s always been something special about this group of people from day one and every new member over the years has added something magical and new.
We also hit gold off stage because we work together really well on the admin side of running the group. I’ve been part of other really great groups where it’s the off-stage work that leads the show to fizzle, so we were incredibly lucky that this gelled as well off stage as it did on.
So I suppose the short answer is: we’re good at admin?
One of the unique aspects of the production is that even the cast doesn’t know who the killer is. What challenges and opportunities does that create as a performer?
When we started the show, we all played it ridiculously guilty throughout so that whoever the audience selected made sense!
But over time it’s actually become fun to just discover each character and see what develops over the course of the show.
It’s hilarious if someone really innocent is chosen as murderer, we get to watch them make sense of everything, giving us that challenge is part of the fun.
The audience plays a major role in shaping each performance. What are some of the most memorable suggestions or unexpected twists you’ve encountered over the years?
Every so often we get an audience member who really digs into the questioning like an actual detective and that is WONDERFUL! We love that.
Because we’re making it up, the show is filled with contradictions or mistakes because we might forget a throwaway comment from 20 minutes ago. But when the audience remember and we don’t, it’s so much fun.
A favourite of mine was one where a character had a finger puppet in the show. It was a fun ‘bit’. But when it came to the murderer vote, the audience wanted it to be the finger puppet, not the guy operating it, the puppet itself, so he had to do a full confession from the puppet’s point of view.
That was all from the audience and it was amazing.
As co-creator of the show, what has it been like to see CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation grow from its origins into an award-winning hit that regularly sells out at the Edinburgh Fringe?
Oh yeah, it’s bonkers!
Weirdly, I think the moment we all feel proudest of is our first EdFringe in 2016 when we were playing the Free Fringe and audiences couldn’t book at that time, so there was no way of knowing if people were going to come.
But they really did come! Every day we could have filled our room three times over. We had to arrive an hour before each show to turn people away.
It was and still is the most pinch me moment.
What’s also so exciting, though, is seeing the growth of improv in the UK. There was not a lot on when we started, but now you can see improv spreading across the country and growing bigger and bigger.
I hope we were a part of that in some way.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation?
Each show will be done one time and one time only. Only the people in the room will ever see that show.
So don’t get FOMO, come and see what’s going on.
