For the first time in almost three years, The Theatre at AACC will put on an in-person production on campus.

The cast of student actors will perform the play “Clue: On Stage” on April 14, 16, 22, 23 and 24 in the Kauffman Theater.

Second-year entrepreneurship student Lauryn Damron, the president of the student theater club, said she is looking forward to the group’s first in-person performance since the pandemic closed the campus in March 2020.

“This going to be so exciting,” Damron said. “This is our first … in-person production post pandemic.”

The comedic murder mystery, adapted from the screenplay of the 1985 movie “Clue,” starring Tim Curry, is based on the popular board game of the same name.

In the play, the six main characters—Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, Mr. Green and Mrs. White—receive an invitation from an unknown source, blackmailing them into attending a dinner party in a large mansion. Throughout the party, characters are killed off one by one in what Madeline Austin, the play’s director, calls a “whodunit.”

First-year electrical engineering student Erik Binnex, who plays Colonel Mustard in the play, said his character is “intimidating” but “oblivious” and falls short of the confidence the dinner guests place in him to solve the crime. About the rank of colonel, Binnix said, “It’s obvious somebody made a mistake.”

Damron, who plays Mrs. White, said her character is an “older, dramatic woman,” whom Binnix described as “excessively confident.”

Theater professor Sean Urbantke said the actors chose “Clue” as the club’s comeback performance.

“Murder mystery was brought up as a suggestion for something fun that people could get behind, and ‘Clue’ kind of came up naturally after … throwing the idea out there,” Urbantke said.

But the pandemic, which delayed everything from shipments of groceries to car repair, held up the approval the club needed to perform the copyrighted play.

“I’ve never experienced it before in my professional life,” Urbantke said. “It has never taken three months to get a license agreement for a play.”

Now that rehearsals are well underway, Binnix said the play will serve as a “good welcome back” to live theater.

“We have really good chemistry amongst each other,” Binnix said. “I think our comedic timing is pretty natural.”