Neil Cathro’s Journey as Christopher Wren in The Mousetrap
I’ve always been obsessed with mysteries and unmasking the bad guy. This obsession likely stems from my childhood of watching reruns of the original Scooby Doo cartoons on the daily. There’s something fundamentally exciting about solving a problem and when you pair that with the search for justice, it’s downright thrilling. When I was cast in Tent Theatre’s “The Mousetrap,” I want to say that my first reaction was “Oh my gosh, I’m in a professional show!” But in reality, my first reaction was “Oh my gosh, I’m in a freakin’ murder mystery!” Knowing that I was now going to give hundreds of audience members that same exciting and suspenseful experience I loved so much as a kid was enough to make me immediately accept.
The nature of Summer stock style theatre is that it’s a fast process, and it leaves little room to breathe. But that’s what makes it so fun. Being a part of this show made me realize how much I love acting, and it reminded me of why I came to school for this career in the first place. We blocked the entire show within the first couple days, and then, we were able to spend the rest of the rehearsal process refining and examining specific moments in great detail. Sarah is a great director because she is all about letting actors follow their instincts and then molding the blocking around that. When we would start a scene, the cast would just move around how they felt their characters would, and then, Sarah would take our movement and tweak it to fit the overall vision of the show.
As dark as the show can be, our rehearsals were filled with laughter. We all immediately gelled as a cast and within the first day we had jokes with each other and were sharing memes we’d made about things within the play. All of my fellow cast members are so unique and talented. They are the reason I am excited to come to work every day, knowing I get to run around onstage with them for two hours every night and solve a crime together is what wakes me up in the morning. The specificity and level of commitment everyone in the cast brings to their character is inspiring.
I hope you enjoy our show, or if you’ve already came I hope you loved it as much as we loved creating it for you. It is a pleasure to tell this story for our audiences every night and discover the clues alongside them!