By: Charity Meier | Novi Note | Published October 2, 2025
NOVI — The Novi community will soon have the opportunity to travel aboard the Orient Express, as the Novi High School theater department will be presenting Agatha Christie’s classic, “Murder on the Orient Express,” Oct. 9-11.
Set in 1934, a cast of characters from various countries travel from Istanbul to various places in Europe via the Orient Express.
“It’s super cool. It has a very vintage vibe with being set in 1930s Europe and everything, and there’s a lot of plot twists, which are very interesting,” said lead actress and prop master Joanna Ambadipudi, 17.
The play will be performed in a black box, or a small room painted black, rather than the auditorium. According to Ambadipudi, this makes for a much more intimate setting for the production, which has a run time of approximately an hour and 45 minutes.
“It really allows the audience to kind of feel that they are a part of the show,” said student technical director Kai Chopra.
“Our cast is working really hard to give it that full train experience that you’re going to get throughout our entire show,” she said.
Student co-director Lilly Balino, 16, said that although they stick with the classic Agatha Christie plot, she thinks many high school students are not familiar with the story and will be surprised by the ending.
“There’s so much hidden humor in all the layers of the story. It just makes it so enjoyable. It makes the dramatic parts stand out more, too,” Balino said.
The show provided students with an opportunity to learn how to perform characters with various accents. Ambadipudi said that the 12 cast members had to learn how to speak with either a French, Hungarian, Russian, Swedish or Scottish accent. To do so, the students were given a two-hour session with graduate theater students from Michigan State University, who were familiar with performing characters with accents.
She said the biggest challenge is being able to convey the accent well while making sure the audience can still understand what they are saying.
For additional help with her French accent, she said she watched French films to get into the headspace of what the accent and phrasing sounds like and practiced it frequently with her castmates.
Chopra, 16, said that she found her biggest challenge with the play has been coordinating everything between costumes, lights and the set in order to tie in small clues throughout the play.
“It’s kind of just little Easter eggs of things that they will start to realize when everything is revealed at the end,” Chopra said. “It doesn’t really help them solve the mystery, but it’s cool at the end of the show for them to realize at the end of the show, ‘Oh, that’s why there’s this on the dress’ or something like that.”
Ambadipudi said the students can learn a lot of skills through theater.
“I think theater teaches you a lot, both through the performance as well as the tech side. Over the past couple of years, I have learned immense, like, problem-solving skills as well as time management skills, taking on sort of different roles through the many shows that I have done. As far as the performance side, I think it makes you a better speaker. You are able to articulate your thoughts well,” Ambadipudi said.
Balino stressed that the play is open for anyone in the community to attend, regardless of their age, affiliation with the school, or lack thereof.
“All of our shows are open to everyone,” Balino said.
The show will be performed at 7 p.m. each day. Tickets cost $12 and are available online or at the door. To get to the theater, enter the high school through the doors off 10 Mile Road near the tennis courts.