The Theater Department is on the receiving end of a lot of strange requests.

One came early this summer that Professor Marie Chiment couldn’t ignore — the Fox School of Business’ Department of Legal Studies needed a dead body.

On Aug. 1, Professor Samuel Hodge will lead members of the Pennsylvania Bar Association through a crime scene investigation as part of its continuing education program.

“Dr. Hodge and I have created a based-on-real-life crime scene that we will be using as a springboard for a more general discussion of how a murder investigation is handled, from the homicide through to trial,” says Legal Studies Administrative Coordinator Nicole Saitta.

With Chiment’s dummy in the starring role, the attendees will be able to examine the crime scene at the event and view a video that recreates the scene as well.

A Playwright’s Clues

Chiment, a big fan of crime dramas, stepped up to the challenge. She uses crime scene investigation techniques in one of her design classes (which she’s dubbed “DSI: Design Scene Investigation”).

“A playwright, when they’re writing a play, they’re dropping clues,” she says. “So as a designer, I search for clues.”

As part of the design class, Chiment provides her students with the first couple of pages of a play and has them design a set and costumes using only the scripted dialogue.

For the crime scene project, Chiment put into practice the techniques she teaches. She was told that a young white male was found dead in an alley of a gunshot wound to the right temple – and that “the rats had gotten to him.”

Collecting Body Parts

Assistant Technical Director Marka Suber pulled a head and hands from Temple Theaters’ stock of props. Chiment built the body from items she found around her house – delivery boxes, paper towel rolls and plenty of fiber fluff to make it humanlike. What resulted is a six-foot male dressed in a hoodie, jeans and Converse sneakers, who ended up on the wrong end of a handgun.

She tapped into the knowledge of a make-up artist for advice on how to build a realistic gunshot wound, and studied the wounds she saw on TV crime shows.

Chiment says the biggest challenge was mimicking the nuances of a human skeleton – making sure the joints are bent at a realistic angle and that everything is proportional. She ensured everything was sewn together so the body will remain intact on its trip to the event.

“I do get to do some interesting things in my profession,” she says.