YOU’RE INVITED TO THE DINNER PARTY, A PLAY WITH SONGS & SNACKS

Top: Herbed shrimp cakes are on the Dinner Party menu. ABIGAIL HOUFF/The Studios of Key West

Right: Clockwise from left, Jessica Newman, Lauren Thompson and Donna Stabile perform at The Studios’ new Dinner Party event March 22-April 1. MARK HEDDEN/ The Studios of Key West

The Studios offers unique spin on dinner theater

This month, The Studios of Key West presents one of the most anticipated theatrical productions of the year. The Dinner Party, a play with songs and snacks written and directed by Chantal Pavageaux, will be staged in the Helmerich Theater for a limited run of eight nights from March 22-April 1. Tickets are available at tskw.org or 305-296-0458.

Audiences are invited to join the hottest new fictional girl group in this deliciously tart take on art, fame, trust, truth and … dinner theater. This “play-within-a-play” pulls inspiration from ’80s sitcoms to Scorcese films, and is created by an all-female cast and crew. The Dinner Party tells the story of "Meme Zeitgeist" and her band The Dinner Party, beginning when they were five waitresses in a tiny diner in Alice, Texas. As the narrative takes shape, we learn how different each person’s story can be, depending on who’s doing the telling.

To put a delicious spin on the evening, Key West chef extraordinaire Abigail Houff has created a tasting menu of one-bite courses paired with each of the eight acts. The menu is meant to capture the emotional state of each act, and includes dishes like gazpacho, beet tartare and zucchini fudge cake. For Act Three, Houff is serving herbed shrimp cakes with mint and dill tzatziki, which will perfectly capture the act’s sense of “truth, lies and fantasy on a bed of dreams with just a hint of phoenix rising”.

Pavageaux is a writer, director and artist whose glittery performances and installations have been produced around the U.S. Pavageaux trained at New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts and worked at the Drama League of New York and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

The production stars a cast of local and national actresses including Moriah Joy, Jessica Newman, Donna Stabile, Janae Thompson, Lauren Thompson, and Mariah Woessner.

Tickets for the play are $110 front row, $70, $55 for members.

AVOID THE LONG DRIVE TO MIAMI AND HAVE ALL YOUR CHILDREN’S NEEDS MET RIGHT HERE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS.

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