Plays for Dinner Theatre (mystery?)
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Topic: Plays for Dinner Theatre (mystery?)
Posted By: Guests
Subject: Plays for Dinner Theatre (mystery?)
Date Posted: 11/03/01 at 1:05am
Can anyone tell me where I can find plays for A Mystery Dinner Theatre or for Dinner Theatre Plays of any kind --- (or what titles I should be looking for). I have ruled out Toni and Tina's wedding for this venue --- need something fairly simple, but don't know what titles I should be looking for or where to look.
Thanks,
Cat
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Replies:
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/03/01 at 12:43pm
There are many sources - start with the Samuel French Catalog - they have a section on mystery theater. You can also find several sources on the web - The American Association of Community Theater - www.aact.org - has a listing under play sources.
Most of them have a stiff front charge and we felt it would take all of our profits out of the dinner so we wrote our own. It only uses one "actor" the Detective who comes in at the end to wrap things up. All the rest of the cast are people who came for dinner - even the murderer. It has a minimum of 15 cast members (diners) and a maximum of 36. We have done it four times and people have rated it a 4.8 on a 1 to 5 scale.
It took a lot of time to get all the parts written but we give each attendee a half sheet of paper that gives the outline of the mystery - who died, under what conditions, what is known and so on. We also give them a half sheet of paper that tells them who their character is and gives them some idea of who at ask questions of. We found that we need a person to hand out the cast bio's and answer questions. That person also watches to make sure everyone is participating - if we see someone standing around or not talking about the murder we give them a hint and tell them who to talk to. This is necessary to keep everyone involved.
When the Detective comes in (during dessert) s/he askes for people to tell who they think committed the murder. After we get several names they vote - then the detective puts together all the clues that have been there all night. About 1/4 of the people actually figure out who did it.
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/03/01 at 4:52pm
Do you know of anything I could look at to get an idea how one would write something like that? I have just searched through a bunch of the different sites linked to aact.org and I am more confused than ever as to how to pull this together!
We the unwilling - led by the unknowing are trying to do the impossible with nothing! <augh>
Cat
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/03/01 at 9:05pm
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e-mail me a mailing address at atoi@seattletheater.net and I will mail you the package by snail mail.
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/10/01 at 11:52pm
I love Doug's idea, but as an answer to your question, last year we did a silly little dinner theatre called "Reunion at Homicide High." It was a lot of fun. It is from Mysteries by Moushey. Their royalties are fairly reasonable.
http://members.aol.com/mystmoush/
The setting is a high school reunion. We set it up so that the audience was there for the reunion, also. Decorated with streamers and balloons. We changed the name of the school to a fictional school that fit our locale, and changed the name of the mascot to fit a costume we had, and changed a couple of "locations" mentioned to fit our area a bit better, just for laughs. Lots of corny references to songs and events of the late 60's early 70's era. I played "Sky" a hippie chick in her own world. Fun was had by all. Only one table guessed the right murderer.
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