INTERVIEW: New audio experience lets theatergoers investigate details of 1922 double homicide

Photo: Ghost Hunt: The Hall-Mills Double Homicide is an audio experience based on the play Thou Shalt Not. Photo courtesy of Jorden Cohen / Provided by Kampfire PR with permission.

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Ghost Hunt: The Hall-Mills Double Homicide is not a typical theatrical experience, but of course the true crime case at the center of the production is anything but typical. This asynchronous multi-city exploration lets audience members investigate the details of a hellish crime that took place in 1922 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. True-crime aficionados and enterprising theater enthusiasts have the chance to visit the scene of the crime (and other important locations) with the help of a new podcast and the Geocaching app.

The production came about thanks to the work of two theater companies — Thinkery & Verse and Butch Mermaid. This new audio experience is based on Thou Shalt Not, a site-specific theatrical retelling of the double homicide. The play was meant to premiere in New York City and have a return engagement in New Brunswick, but that never happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, in order to salvage some of their creative energy, the two theater companies turned the play to an audio experience.

According to a press release, in 1922, a young woman found her life destroyed when her mother, a choir singer at a small New Brunswick, church, was discovered murdered alongside the church’s rector in a ruthless double homicide. The Rev. Edward Hall had been shot in the skull, while the woman next to him, Eleanor Mills, suffered three gunshots to the face and a slit throat.

Someone (presumably the killer) posed the bodies and scattered love letters at the victims’ feet. To this day, some 98 years later, the case remains unsolved. The two theater companies who are reopening the case — at least theatrically — have teamed up with the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, the home parish of Hall and Mills, which still stands today.

The vast majority of the audio experience takes place in New Brunswick, but there are different clues (or “caches”) to be found in other cities, as far as distant as Virginia, Texas and even Italy. And the ensemble members who bring the audio drama to life represent the church’s and theater companies’ commitment to diversity, including BIPOC and LGBTQ+ representation. There are also important themes that come to the forefront and still impact society in 2020, everything from violence against women to policing practices to sexual abuse.

Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with J.M. Meyer, lead writer of the production and co-artistic director of Thinkery & Verse. He shares that latter distinction with Karen Alvarado. The two are joined on the creative team by Ania Upstill, artistic director of Butch Mermaid.

Meyer is an artist and scholar finishing up his doctoral degree at the University of Texas, Austin. His work focuses on “ethical and unethical behavior during war, risk-taking in combat, and competition within military units.” He has several off-Broadway and regional credits to his name as both a playwright and performer. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style and brevity.

What can audience members expect from Ghost Hunt? 

The public can expect a challenging, freely accessible, multi-faceted tragedy, one that requires a bit of leg work but is deeply researched and well-crafted. To make navigating the world as easy as possible, we built Ghost Hunt inside the popular Geocaching app. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you just fire up one of our locations and hunt for the hidden ‘cache.’

Each cache is unique and tied specifically to that location. Some caches include newspaper articles tied to the case. Others contain bits of evidence or artifacts from the main characters. All include a QR code, which gives you access to an audio play created specifically for that location.

We’ll tell you where to stand or sit, what to consider about the environment around you, and even where to walk or explore to get a better sense of the how the story unfolded. In some places, like Willie Stevens’ firehouse, the effect is comic. In others, like Van Liew Cemetery, it is deeply disturbing. 

Ghost Hunt began as a site-specific play at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, the congregation at the center of the 1922 Hall-Mills double homicide, and those site-specific roots are still very much an anchor for how the audience experiences Ghost Hunt. In the 1920s, the congregation at Saint John’s enabled the affair between the Rev. Edward Hall and the choir singer Eleanor Mills; next, members of the congregation (probably) murdered the couple, and then they helped cover it up. Along the way, they ruined the life of Charlotte Mills, the daughter of Eleanor. …

Now that COVID has canceled theater, the public can experience the play not just at Saint John’s, but at each of the locations tied to [the] crime — but we even took a step further. With the constraints of traditional theater lifted, we realized we could build a much more credible, complex world by telling side stories and [making] huge leaps in time. So now the play has scenes that jump back to 1873, before the central characters were even born, and forward to the present day, when all of the characters have passed. …

And it is about as COVID safe as you can make anything these days. The whole point was to still make art, but to do so responsibly, and without endangering our community. 

Finally, it is also possible to access the audio plays on our website. We know that many members of our community are housebound, and we could not in good conscience shut them out. Besides, it is not realistic for anyone to travel to Texas or Italy to experience a 10- or 15-minute short play — but it is possible. 

How difficult was it to create a ‘multi-city theatrical adventure’? Are there many logistics to overcome? 

Hard to say. No one who considers themselves to be a theater artist likes working alone. At times, the project was more isolating than expected — a few hours on Zoom is no replacement for the warmth and improvisations of the rehearsal room. In other ways, it was not so hard. Members of the ensemble — all of whom we have worked with in the past — were already geographically scattered, and therefore able to imagine a scenario for each location and set the cache. …

But the form seems promising, and we have been excited about our reception within the Geocaching community. We know that it will take a while for theater audiences to figure out the platform, but in the meantime we are thrilled with the hardcore Geocachers who have already experienced many of our sites. The project definitely triggered some further ambitions.

How did you find out about this true-crime case?    

We started hearing rumors about the case almost as soon as Karen Alvarado (the ‘Verse’ in Thinkery & Verse) moved to New Jersey to attend the conservatory at Rutgers Mason Gross. The mansion at 23 Nichol is now owned by Rutgers and inhabited by the dean at Douglass College. But back in 1922, it was the home of the Rev. Edward Hall and his wife Frances Noel Stevens Hall. Karen walked by it almost every day. 

To catch the train to New York, you have to walk down George Street, and that takes you right past the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, which is where Eleanor Mills and Edward Hall met. In a particularly strange twist, Edward hired Eleanor’s husband, James Mills, to be the church’s ‘sexton’ or groundskeeper. 

So we were geographically situated within the case without knowing it. …

Here’s the kicker: Thinkery & Verse are J.M. Meyer and Karen Alvarado. They’re married. They had a baby named Mateo in the spring of 2017, and when Karen’s parents visited from out of town, they needed to figure out a baptism, ASAP. Meyer contacted a chaplain living near Rutgers, and the chaplain said, ‘Sure, no problem, I am going to be the guest priest at Saint John’s this weekend. Let’s just meet there.’

So the baptism took place at Saint John’s — i.e. the murder church. It wasn’t until after the baptism that the whole thing really clicked. Thankfully, the present day congregation is kind of adorable — they even baked Mateo a cake. 

Up until the 1990s, the church was largely controlled by men, and those men demanded that the congregation keep the murders quiet. But now the church’s leadership is mostly women, and when they found out that we were theater artists, they almost immediately suggested that we reopen the Hall-Mills files and help them figure out what happened — and perhaps find out how to tell that story in a way that interrogates the past — their church’s past.   

How pivotal has the partnership with the Church of St. John Evangelist been?  

Saint John’s has been a collaborative partner that has kept us safe. Soon after we met them, one of their members provided us with the funding necessary to create a four-person adaptation [of] Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Then they provided us with a space to rehearse our Edinburgh Fringe play Bride of the Gulf, a piece that we built in collaboration with artists from Iraq. Finally, they provided us with the funding necessary to create Thou Shalt Not, our site-specific (and ‘live’) interpretation of the Hall-Mills double homicide. 

While Saint John’s did not provide us with funding for the Ghost Hunt, they did offer to host our most intricate cache, and they allowed us free access to their archives for further research. Most importantly, they didn’t put any constraints on our interpretation. …

In terms of tone, we knew we wanted to access a bit of vaudeville and a bit of James Joyce (whose Ulysses was published the same year as the murders). Still, Saint John’s provided us with the freedom to mock and sympathize with the characters. Total freedom. 

If there was any constraint, it was knowing that we were making a play for a local community that cared about the events and cared about the story — this wasn’t just some random act, but something intimately connected with their identity, whether they liked it or not. And now it is connected to our identity, too. The project needed spirit, not just wit.

Do you believe there are modern-day lessons from this horrific case?  

When you hear threats of violence against women, believe it. And [do] something to stop it. Do not allow that kind of language to happen around you. 

It is also our personal belief that the first shot fired at Edward Hall was what gun enthusiasts call a ‘negligent discharge’ — that is to say, the person holding the gun did not intend to pull the trigger when he or she did. They were threatening Edward, got heated or excited, and the gun just seemed to ‘go off.’ Never threaten someone with a gun — better yet, grow up and do not make threats of violence. Humans use threats of violence to signal all sorts of commitments, but it can always spin out of control. The lesson is this: kids, leave the guns at home. …

Finally, it only takes a cursory look at the evidence and the timeline to see that extreme financial inequality amongst the various parties created opportunities for corruption.

What would be the best method of experiencing this production? Do you really need to be on the ground in New Brunswick, New Jersey?  

Ideally, we would suggest you start out by visiting the location nearest you, whether that’s in New York City, New Jersey, Virgina, Texas or Italy. You can message us directly on the Geocaching app at Thinkery_and_verse if you need help. Once you figure out what location is closest to you, navigate towards it and start hunting. Make sure you follow the hint. If you need more help finding it, look at the activity tab on the app, and see who has recently logged the location. You can often get a clue from them. 

One more tip: The GPS has trouble operating among tall buildings. As a member of the public recently pointed out to us, it is important to note that the “Ghost Hunt: Saved by Wolves” cache in downtown Manhattan is not on the FDR overpass and it is not in the East River. Happy hunting.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Ghost Hunt: The Hall-Mills Double Homicide is now currently available. Click here for more information.