How To Perform Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre
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How To Cast a Mystery Dinner Theatre
Performers in fully scripted Murder Mystery Dinner Theatres don’t need to be good at improvisation; they need to be committed, creative, and confident actors.
Your performers need strong voices. (Remember our discussion about sound systems and microphones?) Their voices need to trained so they won't lose them screaming over dish noise and audience laughter.
Articulate diction; no mush mouth or fading consonant sounds.
Your performers need to be comfortable with and enjoy the intimate relationship with the audience. Not every audience member will like/enjoy every actor. Audience members can be rude and hurtful. One audience member looked right into the eyes of the character and told the poor actress how awful and ugly she was. Certainly she wanted to run off, punch him, or say something nasty, but her gracious professionalism gave her the confidence to completely ignore him.
If you are building a tradition of Mystery Dinner Theatre productions, mix experienced performers with inexperienced performers.
Unless you have some innovative blocking ideas, your performers need to be tall enough to be seen above the tables.
Know someone who does great stand up comedy? The "life of the party kinda guy?" How about him for the lead? No thanks. Give me actors; real actors, generous, ensemble minded actors. This production isn't a venue for someone's ego.
What about the age of performers? Is this a concern? Yes. Remember–naughty sells; not offensive; nothing rude; nothing degrading; but titillating and teasing. Like women sitting on audience men's laps. Audience women dancing with audience men. In Notechtheatre's Country Cruising, at one point the audience is involved in a "cruise ship game." A bulky audience man is selected and instructed that he must go behind a curtain and exchange clothing completely with a tiny actress. He THINKS he may have to do. The rest of the audience SEES him do this in their imagination. Of course, he never does. But the thought is tantalizing. Be sure the performers are age appropriate to comfortable execute the character's actions. And just how old is that? You know your audiences and your community. You decide.