Sandpoint playwright brings audiences into interrogation room with ‘Criminals’

A woman accused of murdering her husband. A mafioso accused of not one but two murders. A third man who no one can quite figure out.

Sandpoint-based playwright Teresa Pesce’s “Criminals” isn’t your typical whodunit.

For one thing, there are three “whos,” with each lead character getting their own act. Secondly, we don’t see the crimes take place; we’re merely flies on the wall of the interrogation room, so the audience finds out what really happened as the investigators do.

“Criminals” is the latest in a long line of plays from Pesce that stretches back to 2008. Before then, Sandpoint used to be home to Unicorn Theatre Players, which was created by Terry Hayes in 1979. After nearly 20 years of producing theater, Unicorn Theatre Players, in Pesce’s words, ran its course, closing in 1997, and nothing was created to replace it.

That was, until, around 2008 when Kathleen Mazzola moved to Sandpoint from Malibu, noticed the lack of theater company and said anyone interested in theater should meet at the since-closed Coldwater Creek Wine Bar. Pesce recalls about 50 people came to the meeting about what would become the Sandpoint Theatre Company.

Mazzola asked anyone interested in playwriting to write a murder mystery of some kind. Pesce, a copy writer, features writer and editor by trade, thought “Why not? I’ll give it a shot.”

Pesce went home and wrote a 73-page play in one weekend. It was called “Murder at the Castle” and was a take on British comedies from the 2000s. Pesce hasn’t stopped writing since, with plays like “Red Tape,” a piece inspired by the artwork of Stephen Schultz, and “Sherlock” following “Murder at the Castle.”

While writing, Pesce finds that dialogue comes quickly to her.

“The characters start having a conversation in my head, and I listen to it, and I write down what they say,” she said. “My brother said to me once ‘If you’re going to be a writer, it helps to be insane and have voices in your head,’ and they do. They have a conversation, and they talk faster than I can type.”

After leading the group through a couple of productions, life took Mazzola back to California, but by that time, Pesce had begun writing plays with a co-writer. The pair talked about it and decided to carry on with the goal of bringing theater back to Sandpoint.

Her co-writer eventually phased out of theater, but Pesce stuck with it, founding Sandpoint On-Stage with Chris Herron in 2009.

Pesce’s newest play is “Criminals.” The play opens Friday and runs through Aug. 16 at the Panida Theater in Sandpoint.

In the first act, Detective Thomas Allen (Scott Gossett), Sergeant Jennifer Conlin (Shelly Johnson), Commander John Fielding (Chris Shaw) and Detective David Adams (Andrew Sorg) are interrogating Emily Radford (Holly Sharp).

Radford has recently returned from a shopping trip to find her husband dead. Should investigators be sympathetic or suspicious? Act One also features Mary Ann Kutzleb as Attorney Joyce Jackson.

In the second act, we see Ponzo Defonso’s (Cory Repass) interrogation. Defonso is a member of the mafia, both charming and, apparently, guilty of two murders. Allen, Conlin, Fielding, Adams and Jackson are all back, now joined by Attorney Tony Petrini (Dwight Webster), who is pushing back at the interrogation at every chance.

The act also features Ashley Ryann as Maria Peralta, Defonso’s girlfriend who keeps submitting embarrassing alibis for Defonso.

Finally, the third act features Fritz Caplan (Alex Jones), a slippery fella Fielding, Allen and Conlin can’t pin down.

The show is written, directed and produced by Pesce. Dwight Webster is running sound and lights, while Doug Jones provided set design, construction and graphic arts.

“Criminals” began to take shape after Pesce watched a show that featured an interrogation.

“What do you have to do to get somebody to admit to a murder like that?” Pesce said. “It isn’t about just bludgeoning them and shining a light in their face. It’s about getting empathy with them so they’ll talk to you. It’s about really, really listening and seeing when they do giveaways and things that show as a sensitive area or hear they’re lying.

“It’s very interesting to watch them work. Interrogation is an art. It’s not beating people to death. It’s an art. It’s hard to lie to an interrogator. They can read you really well.”

Soon after watching the program, Pesce began writing the character of Radford. The first act took a day or two to write, then she moved on to Defonso.

In total, “Criminals” took about a month to complete, primarily because Pesce wanted to make sure she had the facts of the mystery straight.

Pesce also wanted to nail down the emotional journey of each act. Radford’s act is serious and tender. Caplan’s, in contrast, is funny. In the middle, with Defonso, there’s humor but also underlying tension that comes when dealing with the mafia.

“They all have music with them that suits their theme, and the audience is going to go from one emotional experience to another emotional experience that lifts them up,” Pesce said. “Then they get to go out on intermission and laugh and have fun and come back in and then watch this mafia guy run everybody around in circles, and they get to really enjoy it. There’s different emotions that I plugged into.”

Dropping audiences right into the emotions, Pesce made the decision not to have someone do the typical “Please turn off your cell phones” pre-show announcement. There’s no breaking of the fourth wall, she said, simply dimming lights and music leading audiences right into the interrogations.

Through these interrogations, Pesce wants the audience to see there is more to a person than just one story.

“We all have many reasons for why we do what we do, and sometimes we decide to do it, and other times we haven’t made a decision, but we just react,” she said.

But also, please do remember to silence all cell phones before “Criminals.”