Elizabeth French Elwood

Elizabeth taught English and drama in the Burnaby School District, and during this period, she directed a variety of productions including Blithe Spirit, The Mousetrap and The Reluctant Debutante.  While raising her family, she spent many years involved in arts administration and community volunteer activity, subsequently being declared winner of the Burnaby Arts Council annual award for her contributions to the Arts in Burnaby.  In 1998, she and her husband formed Elwoodettes Marionettes, and after creating a number of musicals for the puppet company, Elizabeth wrote a mystery story, To Catch an Actress, which she later expanded into a three-act play.  Under the title, Casting for Murder, the play was produced by the Vagabond Players in 2000, and has since been perfomed by several other groups.  Casting for Murder will go into its fifth production next season, this time in Scarborough, Ontario.  The success of the play encouraged Elizabeth to write additional scripts, and also led to the publication of a mystery anthology.  One of the major characters in the play, the feisty city councillor, Bertram Beary, was so popular with audiences that Elizabeth decided to give him an opera-singing daughter plus an RCMP detective son, and develop a set of ten short mystery stories around Beary and the members of his family.   The book, To Catch an Actress and Other Mystery Stories, published in 2005, continues to gather good reviews and has drawn comparisons to Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, not to mention Elizabeth’s favourite comment to the effect that Beary himself is reminiscent of the delightful Rumpole of the Bailey.  The second play, Renovations, was successfully produced in 2004, and a new book of Beary stories, A Black Tie Affair, and Other Mystery Stories, came out in 2008.  A third Beary anthology is due to be published in the summer of 2009.