Dinner theater

Dinner theater (sometimes called dinner and a show) is a form of entertainment that combines a restaurant meal with a staged play or musical. Sometimes the play is incidental entertainment, secondary to the meal, in the style of a sophisticated night club, or the play may be a major production with dinner less important, or in some cases, optional. Dinner theater requires the management of three distinct entities: a live theater, a restaurant, and usually, a bar.

History

The Madrigal dinner in the Middle Ages might be considered the earliest dinner theater. The earliest dinner theaters served dinner in one room, and staged the play in another. Those are now known as theatre restaurants, a dinner theater subclassification.

Barksdale Theatre

Barksdale Theatre in Richmond, Virginia, founded in 1953 by David and Nancy Kilgore at the historic Hanover Tavern, was the first formal dinner theater in the United States. After the theatre was established, an adjoining room in the theatre was changed to accommodate a buffet dinner for groups attending the performance, eventually becoming available to all patrons. However, "Barksdale prefers to be known as a theatre that happens to have a restaurant, and dinner is optional," their brochure states. They are a professional, non-profit theatre.

Mystery fiction

Mystery fiction is a genre of fiction usually involving a mysterious death or a crime to be solved. In a closed circle of suspects, each suspect must have a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character must be a detective who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts fairly presented to the reader. Sometimes mystery books are nonfictional. "Mystery fiction" can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.

Mystery fiction may involve a supernatural mystery where the solution does not have to be logical, and even no crime involved. This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, where titles such as Dime Mystery, Thrilling Mystery and Spicy Mystery offered what at the time were described as "weird menace" stories—supernatural horror in the vein of Grand Guignol. This contrasted with parallel titles of the same names which contained conventional hardboiled crime fiction. The first use of "mystery" in this sense was by Dime Mystery, which started out as an ordinary crime fiction magazine but switched to "weird menace" during the latter part of 1933.

Dinner

Dinner usually refers to the most significant and important meal of the day, which can be the noon or the evening meal. However, the term "dinner" can have many different meanings depending on the culture; it may mean a meal of any size eaten at any time of day. Historically, it referred to the first meal of the day, eaten around noon, and is still sometimes used for a noontime meal, particularly if it is a large or main meal. The meaning as the evening meal, generally the largest of the day, is becoming standard in many parts of the English-speaking world.

Etymology

The word is from the Old French (c. 1300) disner, meaning "breakfast", from the stem of Gallo-Romance desjunare ("to break one's fast"), from Latin dis- (which indicates the opposite of an action) + Late Latin ieiunare ("to fast"), from Latin ieiunus ("fasting, hungry"). The Romanian word dejun and the French déjeuner retain this etymology and to some extent the meaning (whereas the Spanish word desayuno and Portuguese desjejum are related but are exclusively used for breakfast). Eventually, the term shifted to referring to the heavy main meal of the day, even if it had been preceded by a breakfast meal (or even both breakfast and lunch).

Theatre

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").

Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.

The Murder Mystery Company

The Murder Mystery Company is a nationwide theater troupe in the United States that specializes in interactive murder mystery dinner theater entertainment in both public and private show environments. It was founded in 2002 by Scott R. Cramton with local shows in Grand Rapids, MI and has since grown significantly. In June 2012 The Murder Mystery Company had public venues in twelve cities, by September of the same year the business had grown to nineteen venues in fifteen separate states. In February 2015 The Murder Mystery Company had public venues in thirty-six cities in eighteen separate states.

History

Scott R. Cramton, the company's founder, decided to form an improv group of local actor friends (initially calling themselves Grimprov) to perform his scripts as small party entertainment. With the demand for their performances growing and in an effort to promote shows outside of the state of Michigan, Scott renamed his troupe, and in 2002 The Murder Mystery Company was born.