Putting on a Dinner Theater
by Gary Randolph

A dinner theater is a great way to involve your drama team in ministry beyond Sunday morning worship. A dinner theater can give you the opportunity to use your talents to raise money and awareness for any church or community cause.

The Cause

The purpose of our dinner theater was to raise money for a hurricane relief trip that our church was planning. This is a cause that both the church and the non-church community can get behind. Thus we could get publicity in the newspapers and draw community people into the audience, hopefully giving them a positive experience in the church. Other good causes could include raising money for a community food back, helping with a local family in need, or supporting families of service people. One consideration is the impact of the amount you are likely to raise. For instance, if you think you can raise $1,000, that won't go very far if the need is $1 million. But for a hurricane relief trip, $1,000 could buy quite a few supplies.

The Dinner

You probably can't coordinate both the show and the dinner using just your drama team. We found a chef in the church who was willing to plan, purchase, and prepare the meal. We also arranged for the people who would be going on the hurricane relief trip to act as servers. That eliminated serving lines, making the meal more elegant. It also allowed our drama team to focus just on the program. We wanted to offer a fine meal and a fine program so that people would feel good about paying $15/person for it. So we wanted to steer away from typical church pot-luck foods and more toward fine restaurant foods. Our menu ended up being tossed greens with homemade dressing, baked chicken breasts, new potatoes baked in sauce, carrot & green bean casserole, rolls, pineapple peach dessert, coffee or iced tea. The food ended up costing about $5 per person, giving us a good profit per person. We also insisted that we use cloth tablecloths, real plates, and real silverware rather than paper products. It meant a lot more clean-up, but the effect was upscale rather than downscale.

The Program

Our dinner theater was an evening of sketch comedy. This allowed us to feature more actors than we might have with a regular play or a musical. And everyone enjoys laughing. We put together a program of about 60-75 minutes using the following:

Our worship pastor offered to put together a jazz combo for the evening, which played during dinner and between sketches. That also helped tremendously in setting the mood for the evening.

The Promotion

• We made posters that were put up around the church
• We had announcements made in all adult classes in the church.
• We made a promotional video to show in church - The Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Take Your Special Someone to the Dinner Theater.
• We sent press releases to the local newspapers and radio stations. Some radio stations had an online form for submitting things to the community calendar.
• We were planning to follow-up the press release with a call to the main local newspaper. But before we could, they contacted us. They came to one of our rehearsals to take pictures and interview us and published a two-page spread.

The Results

We sold out the dinner theater. This allowed us to net around $1100 from the ticket sales. In addition, our free-will offering raise more than $400. The performers and audience members were all extremely pleased by the evening. Some were even calling for it to be done quarterly. Doing something that often, the dinner theater would soon not be special. So we won't do it quarterly. But we are planning to do it annually. And next year we will plan two nights.

The To Do List

So what all has to be done to make a dinner theater a reality? Quite a lot. As the main person in charge, I worked on it for three months. Here is a short list of the things that have to be done.

• Develop your vision for the dinner theater – what you want it to accomplish, what it will look like, what cause you want to support.
• Get permission from the pastoral staff for your dinner theater vision.
• Evaluate the room where the dinner theater will be held. How many people can be seated at tables? How will food get from the kitchen to there? Does the room have adequate stage area? Can the room be made dark enough in the audience area and bright enough on the stage for focus to be on the stage while still allowing lighting for people to move through the audience? Does the room have what you need in terms sound and video?
• Get a volunteer chef and make sure that person understands your vision for the evening. Plan the meal with that person.
• Start working on the poster two months before the event. It may take 2-3 weeks to get the poster right, and you want posters up a month before the event. You may also want to send posters with cover letters to sister churches.
• Print tickets. Arrange for ticket sales. Look at the calendar to make sure you allow for tickets to be sold enough Sundays before the event. If tickets are being sold to the community, how will they purchase them?
• Send press releases to local newspapers and radio stations 2-3 weeks before the event. Some radio stations had an online form for submitting things to the community calendar. Before sending press releases, call the newspaper to find out the name of the editor who would be most interested in the event. Then follow up with that editor a few days after the releases are sent.
• Find volunteer servers. Invite your servers to be the audience at your dress rehearsal.
• Find volunteers to decorate the tables and/or the room. There are lots of things (like colored confetti) that can be done for little or no budget.
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
• Do everything not for your own glory but for the glory of God.

Good luck, and break a leg!

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