Murder mystery awaits during Arts at Marks benefit

The Arts at Marks Garage is $70,000 in debt and losing money by the day. Even if — and that’s a big “if” — the popular downtown arts center can put together a business model that will cover current and future operating expenses, that debt must be made good.

If it isn’t, well, the Arts could end up like Indigo, the Glades and Bill Lederer’s Bar — another vanished downtown landmark.

Everything looked good when a local philanthropist quietly sent word to the Arts board that he would hand-deliver a check for $70,000 — no publicity needed. The only problem is that someone murdered him.

Your assignment — if you choose to accept it — is to be at the Arts at 6 p.m. Friday and solve the case.

Donna Blanchard, managing director of Kumu Kahua Theatre and newly appointed consulting director for Arts at Marks, hopes that you will be there to help at a Murder Mystery Fundraising Party.

“It’s a combination of an interactive murder mystery and escape-room puzzles and riddles that need to be solved in order to get clues,” Blanchard explained.

For the record, the murdered philanthropist is fictional, but the financial crisis is real. The Arts at Marks organization, which runs the ground-floor arts space inside the garage building at the corner of Nuuanu Avenue and Pauahi Street, really is $70,000 in debt. Despite various efforts to bring the nonprofit to stability over the past few years, the business model that got it there is not sustainable.

Blanchard, who along with Kumu Kahua became involved as a sponsor for The Arts at Marks a little more than a year ago, has now stepped in as consulting director. Her aim is to do for the Arts what she did for Kumu Kahua five years ago: turn things around and develop new sources of revenue. Today’s event is a first step in updating the Arts’ fundraising.

“An escape-room puzzle is a locked room, and you have to solve riddles or puzzles to find the location of the key or the combination of the lock,” she explained. “Escape” games like this one have become increasingly popular across the country, in fact.

“We’re using things like pentagrams and story puzzles, and crosswords and riddles will need to be solved, in order to get clues, and the teams will need the clues to solve the mystery. We’re fully making use of the space for the mystery.”

Blanchard came to Honolulu five years ago, as Kumu Kahua was facing an uncertain future. The group’s roots were academic rather than community-based, and state grants were its primary source of funding. In the aftermath of the U.S. housing collapse and recession of 2008, however, grant money dried up. Blanchard helped Kumu Kahua set aside any traditional reticence or reluctance to lobby the public for support.

Kumu Kahua began holding fundraising events and made its theater available to other groups on “dark nights.” Audiences were politely invited to donate before and after performances. In 2015, when audience members asked about the T-shirt seen in its production of “Joker,” Blanchard ordered a limited number and sold them as a fundraiser.

Although Blanchard declined to give specifics, she plans to bring a similar entrepreneurial spirit to the Arts. For instance, tonight’s event is actually a “two-fer.” After an hour of interactive sleuthing at the Arts, the evening continues at Kumu Kahua Theatre on Merchant Street. There, ticket buyers can sit back, relax and follow the clues in Kumu Kahua’s season-opening production of “Who Killed Gilbert Botello?” — playwright Garrick Paikai’s local-style parody of classic English murder mysteries.

Tickets for tonight’s event also includes food provided by nearby eatery Bethel Union.

“Who Killed Gilbert Botello?” follows the adventures of hard-boiled HPD detective Roy Rodger Kalauakekahuna III and his goofy young sidekick and protege, HPD officer Billy Souza, as they search for Botello’s killer at his place of employment, a luxurious mansion on Rabbit Island.

The suspects are wealthy Jacob Harrington; his ambitious son, state Sen. Robert Harrington; Robert’s ambitious wife, Monica Harrington; the family butler, Austin Fretis; and their Filipina maid, Maria “Bunny” Passion.

The investigation is complicated by the arrival of Maggie Chun, an ambitious young television newscaster, who turns up on the island determined to solve the case.

“It’s such a good, funny local show,” Blanchard said. “You don’t have to be born and raised here to get the jokes. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

“You can tell someone with a really good comedic mind wrote it, and the director, R. Keven Doyle, has a real good handle on it. He and Garrick have been co-conspirators for a long time, and everybody comes out of the show smiling.”

She added, “‘Who Killed Gilbert Botello?’ is a mystery you actually can solve if you’re paying attention and you get all the clues. I’m hoping that the party at Marks will get people in that mindset.”