Zuiker: That's The Secret Weapon

Live theater is an "experience".

As CSI Files previously reported, CSI creator Anthony Zuiker will be appearing at the International Mystery Writers' Festival on June 21 and 22. Zuiker told the The Courier-Journal in a phone interview that he wasn't familiar with the festival before being asked to attend, "but I'm very selective about the things I appear at, and after I read the proposal, I thought it would be a great thing to be a part of a festival that's about writers and writing. It's a long flight, and it's a long way from my family, but I think it's for a good cause."

One of the purposes of the festival is to try to revitalize the staged murder mystery. While mystery stories are popular on television, they have not done as well in the theater. "I think it comes down to the fact that the mystery needs to reinvent itself for this generation," Zuiker explained. "People are so used to watching the new [Jerry] Bruckheimer-esque visual style of television and movie making that it's almost as if you have to do for the stage what we did for television. The Agatha Christie version of mystery for the stage isn't quite going to fly in 2010."

"I think what you have to do is incorporate a very interactive, visual medium onstage that plays to what makes live theater great," Zuiker continued. "I don't have that paradigm in my head right now, but I figure it's going to have to be more progressive and adapt to the times. Perhaps the playwriting of this generation hasn't quite caught up to the new visual style." The man behind CSI went on to describe what live theater has that television lacks. "You have smells. You have sounds. You're living inside the experience," he said. "I think playwrights need to remember that when you're in a theater audience, you're in it. You're living inside the experience. That's the secret weapon."

The original article is from the Courier-Journal.

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