Interview: High Stakes Productions’ Luis Castelló, Peter Corey, and Molly Jones

Breaking news to your phone. US mobile only. No password required.

Broadway + NYC

Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Off Broadway

Cabaret

Dance

Opera

Classical Music

West End / UK

International

Canada

Australia / New Zealand

Europe

Asia

Latin America

Africa / Middle East

Entertainment

Ctrl + K to open · Esc to close

"When it comes to a murder mystery, there's so much low hanging fruit for good comedy, good improv, and character building."

Most Popular

Get all the top news & discounts for Chicago & beyond. No password required.

Chicago is known for its stellar improv scene, and there is a spooktacular improv show happening through Halloween at The Second City’s UP! Comedy Club. After seeing Clued In: Travel Can Be Murder, I was honored to speak with three very talented improv artists, Luis Castelló, Peter Corey , and Molly Jones with High Stakes Productions, about all things improv, murder, and Agatha Christie.

Get all the top news & discounts for Chicago & beyond.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did you all get started in improv, and how did you find yourselves in the middle of a murder mystery?

MJ: Growing up, I always really liked to perform. Summer camp was a big part of my life, big camp counselor energy. I loved to lead people and sing and make up camp songs. Once I learned that making things up on the spot was something I could on a deeper level with the purpose of entertaining, I got into improv a little bit in college. My older brother moved to Chicago, and I visited him a couple times, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really the city to be in if you want to be involved with comedy, specifically improv.’ So I moved here in 2010, started taking classes at the various programs across the city. Started to make teams, meet folks, get more and more involved in the different types of improv all over the city. Through that, I met our artistic director, Caleb George . He invited me in 2016 to audition for High Stakes Productions. It was that year that I started with Clued In, the improvised murder mystery, and Hitch*Cocktails, the improvised Alfred Hitchcock thriller and drinking game. I've been at it now for 16 years, and it's the most essential part of my life.

LC: I started improv because I always liked theater and acting, and improv just so happens to be a very approachable art form, in that it's more practice than memorizing. It's very community centered. What I love the most about improv is that, in order for you to be good, you have to practice how to be selfless. You have to practice how to sacrifice your joke in favor of the piece that you're creating, because then those moves are the ones that really stand out.

I joined High Stakes Productions in 2021 right after the pandemic. I used to do genre improv before. like telenovelas, so joining Clued In was a very fun transition for me. In Chicago, there's a lot of independent groups, but there are a few groups that are highways of very talented people — and High Stakes is one of those. High Stakes has close to 30 cast members, and the caliber of talent that you get to play with is uncommon. I get to play with Molly and James Dugan, who directs Blueprint at iO and performs with the Armando, the longest running show. I get to perform with Kristen and Alonso and C.J. and Audrey, and so many people who are either part of the Second City Touring Company, or understudies for the Mainstage, like Molly. We have former Mainstage members as well, like E.J. Cameron. It’s just a supercharged team in which we all stand out in our own right, but we all bring our improv expertise to tell stories.

PC: I started with improv in high school, and eventually went to school for acting. Ed Trout was the artistic director of ComedySportz at the time who gave me a way in, and I've been doing improv for way over 20 years. For me, it was kind of a weird path because I went to school for acting and was taking it very seriously. So I moved to Chicago, and I was like, ‘Okay, no more of this improv stuff. I'm gonna focus up, get into the theater scene, and I'm gonna do this.’ I got into the theater scene, and it's like what Luis was saying. I was looking for an ego-less world and sometimes it's not there. So I was like, ‘Let me go to iO, take a class, see if I want to do this more.’ I created a show that's still running. Armando's the longest running, but we're not far behind. It's called Ten Dollar Comedy at The Second City. I met C.J. Tuor, one of the guys who found Hitch*Cocktails, through another show he was directing, Improvised X-Files. This was back when we had maybe eight people in the cast. I was a substitute for a couple years with Maddie Murphy, and we just kept growing and growing. Eventually, we picked up this idea of doing another show Clued In. Luckily, we had that connection to The Second City through Ten Dollar Comedy and all the people Luis mentioned. We started running it, not knowing how long it would go, and she just kept going. It became an evergreen show for us.

The other fun part is I don't think I was ever into murder mysteries, but then you get so immersed in this stuff. I had watched a couple Hitchcock films before. I think I've watched all of them now except for four. Now I'm reading murder mystery books for fun. The ensemble has a book club, we have a movie watching party. We all saw Sheep Detective with our families and significant others, and it's just a very tight knit group. Familiarity and being close with people is everything in improv. This stuff is not easy. When people see it and think it's a magic trick, there's a reason for that. We have put in the work and the time.

Clued In is in its 10th year, this is our 3rd year doing the UP! Comedy Club. We love working with The Second City. Every time we try to change the show and enhance it. You'll never see the same murder — it's totally made up, it's all new — but we're also working the show and changing it and growing it in our own ways and bringing in new awesome cast members. We started touring too. I'm one of the oldest in the company, but it's nice to see humble beginnings. Now we get a lot of opportunities, and it's made possible because we take a big swing and we have a lot of talent, and I'm proud of that.

What about the murder mystery genre lends itself to be a good improv show?

PC: I think it's in the zeitgeist always. We try to get something that an audience will relate to and murder mysteries don't go away. We also pull from Glass Onion and the Knives Out series, Sheep Detective and stuff like that. It's got such a resonance with so many people who love that genre. And even if they don't, what's great for improv is that there's so many twists and turns with murder mysteries, and we ‘yes and’ a lot. We're dumping out so much information in these shows, and a detective can really take charge at the end and we’ll ‘yes and’ whatever that person is doing. For an improv thing, it is tricky. There's a lot of intricacy, but also the basic tenets of improv lead us to success in our shows. This show is a 90 minute show, and most people would come see it and not say, ‘Wow, it was really lacking energy.” The high paced and the fun improv, the way we like to build on each other, also works and it feeds the show.

MJ: The fun thing about doing a murder mystery is that you get extremely different and distinct characters. We get to live in those characters and have fun and play in those characters, and sometimes we get to do a French accent. We get to live in that world, and then, throughout the show, naturally find and reveal to the audience these connections that we have to each other. In yesterday's show, you knew that Peter and I were a married couple, and that Jessica and Heather were also married. That's what you knew at the beginning, but throughout the show, there are reveals, there are affairs, and these are things that we're finding together. Not only does that affect the relationship layer, but that affects what the detective is going to include in their summation. When it comes to a murder mystery, there's so much low hanging fruit for good comedy, good improv, and character building.

LC: I would love to piggyback on that because as a person of color whose English is a second language, diving into the uniqueness of these characters lets me bring my heritage and my language and my own world into this. The connections organically happen. High Stakes Productions, in general, makes it very easy for us to play. Caleb George , Bruce Phillips , Peter, a lot of the people who are in charge try to figure out how to approach it from a smart way — work smarter, not harder. How can we shape the interrogation in a way that's engaging to the audience, or we're making sure that we look suspicious ourselves? How can we structure this storyline to make sure that we emphasize travel? How can we make this character shine brighter through this monologue or shared monologue? All the pieces are very intentional because there are people who really study the genre deeply. I highly value that because for somebody who doesn't study the genre as deeply, they make me look really good because they give me all the cliff notes and key tools to deliver a strong murder mystery at the end of the day.

PC: Also, just locations. You see it in this show, but travel can be murder. We go all over the place usually, and just the fun of not being bogged with sets, the improv can be looser like that. Just the way we get to move and be in all these fun places for characters to meet, I think that's a great part of improv where the murder mystery can really go anywhere.

Do you have a favorite location that an audience has suggested?

MJ: It immediately comes to mind: Stonehenge. It's one of the Wonders of the World, so it lends itself to a great deal of mystery. But also, the six of us that were on stage, we probably don't know too much about Stonehenge, so we get to make up what it is. I came out as the narrator, and I was like, ‘Each stone, 10 feet tall, 10 feet wide,’ and that's the reality now. Now that's what Stonehenge is. We got to have some very British accents, or American tourists. We have also done in space. We've done a submarine, we've done in a sewer, in a baseball stadium. Every fast food restaurant, every supermarket. The more unique, the better.

PC: I didn't think it was going to be my favorite location, but it ended up being one of my favorite shows. It was a kindergarten. And we were like, ‘Oh, no. Well, we can't kill the kids. What are we gonna do here?’ So we all played children, and then we had a stuffed teddy bear that had been dismembered, and that was the murder. It was just such a smart way to tackle kindergarten. I think back to that show, and I was like, ‘No, I probably hated that suggestion, but we made it work.’

LC: There's so many, but selfishly, I like convent because I made it very Mexican. I played a historic character, Sor Juana de la Cruz, and I made all my white castmates colonizers wanting to steal some manuscripts from Sor Juana. What I love about it is everybody's so talented, they're like, ‘Alright bet, let's do this.’ And it was really fun.

Molly, you mentioned earlier your amazing French accent in the show yesterday. Did you know you were going to do an accent when you stepped on stage or do you surprise yourself even when you open your mouth and you're like, ‘Oh no, I'm committed to this for 90 minutes’?

MJ: I was waiting to hear who the other characters were and what their relationships were. Based on the light sequence, I knew I was gonna be speaking last. Everyone had a job on the ship, there's a juggler and the magician and the dancer, and there's the owner of the ship. My first instinct — and it's what I will always do in a Clued In show — is be in love with or married to someone. So I knew I wanted to be part of the family. My first instinct was, ‘I'm gonna be married to Peter,’ and he h

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/chicago/article/Interview-Luis-Castell-Peter-Corey-and-Molly-Jones-at-High-Stakes-Productions-20261020)._