Misconceptions have tarnished the image of dinner theater. Some actors believe that if they accept a role at a dinner theater, they’ll have to work for low wages, be forced to wait tables, and perform in an amateurish production. Contrary to all the myths, many dinner theaters pay a moderate salary, only in rare instances do performers double as waiters, and several venues in the country mount productions that have been on Broadway. Dinner theater runs the gamut from big-budget musicals in resorts to corporate shows for business conventions. It’s possible to pay the bills by doing dinner theater, land prestigious roles that will boost your resume, and also meet a network of your peers. In addition, most theaters will pay for your transportation, housing and food, and some even offer gym memberships, company cars and health insurance. Despite its lowbrow image and modest salaries, dinner theater is great for both young people looking to gain stage experience and more seasoned actors who simply want steady work.
“Dinner theater is really the middle ground between regional theater, off-Broadway and Broadway,” said David Czarnecki, former president of the National Dinner Theatre Association (NDTA), an organization of non-union theaters from coast to coast. “The talent we use in most dinner theaters are up-and-coming people new to the workplace. Dinner theater offers a wide variety of employment for actors young and old who are trying to break into the business.”
The NDTA was organized back in the 1970s to support and enhance American dinner theaters, according to Czarnecki. “NDTA dinner theaters are as professional as you can get before you go to a union theater,” he said, adding that occasionally Equity actors are hired for certain shows.
Anyone who thinks most dinner theater actors double as waiters or waitresses should know the statistics. “On a percentage basis, less than 20 percent of the dinner theaters in this country have actors that wait on tables,” Czarnecki said. “Typically, dinner theater performers are strictly actors.”
Will Prather, owner of dinner theaters in Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona, echoed that sentiment. “The idea that all dinner theater actors wait on tables is one of the largest misconceptions out there,” he said. “We don’t have singing waiters and waitresses at my theaters. ”
Productions at Prather’s Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre in Lancaster, Pa., which is only a three-hour train ride from Manhattan, primarily feature New York actors. “It’s one of our more popular theaters because it’s so close to New York,” Prather said. “But in the fall, we have huge negotiating power when we offer six-month contracts that take you to warm places like Fort Myers, Fla., and Mesa, Ariz., in the winter months.” Productions at Prather’s theaters include such well-known titles as Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast,
The average salary for dinner theater actors has risen over the years. These days, a typical gig will bring in a little over $400 a week. “Our actors don’t have any other outside expenses, and since we do seven to nine shows per week, they usually come in for a daily meal, and we put them up in a condo or house, and give them company cars and health-club memberships. I go in and negotiate with Actors’ Equity every year, and we’re already very close,” he said. “Generally where we fall down isn’t the salaries. Where we run into negotiation issues is the number of contracts per show that we can offer.”
From Broadway to dinner theater
One of the best-known theaters in the New York area is the Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford, N.Y. Originally opened in 1974 as An Evening Dinner Theatre, the 500-seat venue underwent a massive technical renovation in 1991 in order to accommodate Broadway-style productions. Allan Gruet, public relations and press representative, said the theater has survived for more than three decades while many others in the Northeast have gone out of business. He said two large dinner theaters in Connecticut have closed, as did the famous Chateau de Ville chain of five theaters in New England.
“None of them exist anymore, and the reason is that they didn’t keep up the quality of the productions, so people just stopped coming,” Gruet said. “Dinner theater has a bad reputation based on some old ideas of the genre that took place in the Midwest and the West. I actually worked at a couple of them, and they were places where the actors had to wait on tables and there was a real lack of professionalism.
“The emphasis is really on professionalism here,” Gruet said. “We serve dinner and drinks and then everything is cleared away. There is no service during the show at all. ”
The Westchester Broadway Theatre hires Equity actors and musicians, and occasionally casts non-union people in shows as well. “Actors come and go from here,” Gruet said. “We get Broadway actors when they’re not working on Broadway.”
Theater veteran Patti Mariano, who won the 2004 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Performer in a Non-Resident Production (for
“For me, dinner theater is really a great opportunity to work and develop your craft, and that’s what actors always want to do,” she said.
Mariano added that, although many of the smaller American dinner theaters have closed, the bigger houses in major cities still give actors tremendous exposure. “At the Westchester Broadway, you’re visible to agents and casting people that come up from Manhattan. It’s better than being out somewhere in the provinces.”
Elsewhere in the country
Actors in what some New Yorkers disparagingly call “fly-over country” have great opportunities to gain experience in dinner theater, too — and earn some of the highest salaries in the genre. Minneapolis, renowned for its prestigious regional theater scene, has the country’s largest dinner theater, a multiplex called Chanhassen Dinner Theatres. The 90,000-square-foot facility opened in 1968 on a suburban site where a cornfield once stood. Solveig Huseth, general manager of Chanhassen, said the complex has four theaters that each run different shows. While Chanhassen primarily hires Equity actors, the chain also uses a small percentage of non-Equity talent.
Chanhassen, besides being a dinner theater, is also Minnesota’s largest restaurant, but actors never have to wait tables. “It’s against Equity rules, and we wouldn’t operate that way even if we could,” Huseth said.
Actors in the Northeast who want to work in dinner theater but don’t want to travel outside the region need look no further than the Massachusetts-based Mystery Café. Owner David Goldstein founded Mystery Café in 1987 in the lounge of a Cambridge bar and mostly cast his friends in the theater’s first production, the satirical whodunit Death & Taxes. The show was sold out for weeks, and Goldstein quickly opened a second theater in the area. During the next seven years Goldstein licensed the murder-mystery dinner theater concept, the logo and scripts to producers in 21 cities in the U.S. and Canada.
Expanding the dinner theater concept
Goldstein expanded and started doing shows on dinner trains, boats, and in banquet halls and restaurants across New England. Eventually major corporations took notice, and Goldstein began producing private shows at business functions and conventions. He founded Team Building and Scavenger Hunts for clients such as Microsoft, and other Fortune 500 companies. At these events, many of the shows have a mere outline of a script, and the actors improvise many of the lines and force the audience to participate for an interactive experience. The shows help corporate employees learn such skills as communication, time management, delegation and creativity. Although the pay for actors is generally on the lower end of the scale, a few people have managed make a career out of performing in corporate shows.
Katherine Pecevich studied musical theater at the Boston Conservatory and never thought she’d wind up doing corporate dinner theater. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve performed in close to 1,000 shows,” Pecevich said. “A lot of people may look down on it, but over the years it’s given me an ability to connect with a type of audience I’ve never found elsewhere.”
The challenges of dinner theater
Pecevich said that corporate dinner theater offers a level of creativity for actors that cannot be found in more traditional genres. “I’ve gotten most of my jobs from dinner theater. I went to theater school, but doing dinner theater and getting out there in the trenches, changing in a closet in a Hilton somewhere, or in a hotel bathroom putting on strange wigs, and working with props that don’t always work—that’s a real-life theater experience, the kind they don’t teach you in school.”
Pecevich said dinner theater also offers wonderful networking opportunities and has helped her land roles in more mainstream productions, such as a role in the ensemble of the national tour of Annie.
Actor Paul Kerr, who has been performing at dinner theaters across the country and in national and regional tours of Broadway hits for over 30 years, is a big advocate for the genre.
“Sometimes dinner theater is considered the poor relation to national tours and regional theater, but I’ve worked with opera singers, Sara Gettelfinger—who worked on Broadway’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels—and many other fine actors,” Kerr said.
Kerr concedes, however, that the genre does have its drawbacks. At a traditional theater, the curtain normally goes up at 8:00 p.m., and audiences show up around 7:45 to take their seats. “At a dinner theater, the dynamics are so different, because the audience has been there for about two hours since they go through a buffet and have drinks around 6:00 p.m.,” Kerr said. “ the time the curtain goes up, they’ve eaten a big meal and maybe had a beer, and now, all of a sudden, you’ve got to keep them interested in the show—that’s a real challenge.”
Learning to coexist with restaurant workers can be difficult for newcomers to dinner theater. “You have to learn how to share the energy with the rest of the staff because it’s not just a theater—it’s also a restaurant,” he said. “You may not be able to set up props early because there’s food in the way. You’ve got to be very cooperative and understanding because everyone’s got a job to do, from the kid who washes the dishes to the actor who has the lead in the show.”
Pecevich has also faced similar challenges. “I remember working in a production of 42nd Street at a dinner theater in Naples, Fla., and I’d have to run through the kitchen to get to the stage — wearing tap shoes,” she said, laughing. “I was like, ‘Please, don’t wash the floor yet.’”
The other side
Not everyone has had rewarding experiences in dinner theater. Ryan Sander, who worked as a swing on Broadway in Mamma Mia!, played Bill Calhoun in a Florida production of
Sander admits that he has mixed feelings about dinner theater and recalls that the modest housing accommodations and the car provided for cast members weren’t what he expected. “It’s the actor’s responsibility to communicate with the producers and owners and anyone who has control over your living situation,” he said. “Doing dinner theater is like anything else when you’re not protected by a union. My experience in dinner theater was comparable to doing a show on a cruise ship, except that I was getting paid less. I was grateful for the job, but parts of it were very tough. I was entertaining people, and the greatest part of the experience was getting to know the people I worked with, so it wasn’t a waste of time.
Validation
Pecevich said, regardless of what type of dinner theater you choose to work in, whether it’s a high-paying union house or a small family-run venue, the pros almost always outweigh the cons. “Every hour you’re in front of an audience — under a proscenium or in a hotel dining room — you’re still gaining acting experience,” Pecevich said. “Some people may think dinner theater is beneath them, that it’s not aesthetically right, but once you get out of school and realize how tough things are out there for actors — you’ll realize that it’s decent work and can be quite profitable.”
Dinner theater serves an important purpose for actors. While it may not make you rich and famous, you’ll gain valuable experience and have a better chance of getting cast in a challenging role. You can also build your resume, network with peers and make great contacts in the theater industry. For older actors who are struggling to find work in New York, dinner theater is a great way to stay in the game and get a regular paycheck.
“Actors wanting to work in dinner theater have to do research to find the job opportunities out there,” said NDTA president Czarnecki. “I urge every performer to go on the Internet and examine the seasons of dinner theater across the country and contact casting directors and producers. Although most dinner theaters are not going to Manhattan or Los Angeles to audition on a regular basis, owner-operators, producers and casting directors always welcome photos, resumes, emails and follow-ups because dinner theaters are looking for the best available talent.”
