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The Prospect Theatre in Hollywood is looking to change the face of dinner theater by pairing Shakespeare with '80s pop music, a chef-driven menu and a liberal policy on cell phone usage.
“Love Is a Battlefield” is Prospect Theatre's ambitious new production that re-imagines the tragic tale of Romeo and Juliet. So if you can imagine actors in leather jackets and ripped jeans dancing through an audience singing Michael Jackson, Prince and Pat Benatar, you’re halfway there. Add a dinner menu by award-winning chef Kyle Schutte, dim the lights and order a cocktail, and you have a new approach to dinner theater.
When the show’s artistic producer, Joey Bybee, joined The Frame, he said that his audience needs to be people interested in a little bit of everything.
One of the things I noticed was that a ton of people had their mobile phones out and were shooting video during the show. You seem to want that to happen.
Encourage it, definitely. I mean, it's just the way of things now. There's a line from, I think, "Henry V" where he says, 'Tis your thoughts now that must deck our kings. Well, in our case it's, 'Tis your tweets now that must fill our seats. One of the main goals of this type of immersive entertainment is to make it social. So if I were to cut off the social media element of social, then I'd be doing them a disservice.
Romeo and Juliet is an epic, tragic love story. What are the actors going through when they're hearing silverware clinking as they're trying to die on stage?
At first glance, they always hate it. Every one of them is like, This is awful! And it's just a challenge I suppose that we're offering food and drink and there are things that come along with that. Every problem has a solution, so if there's not a solution, there's not really a problem. It's a parameter. So here's our parameter for the show.
Do the actors know that going in? And if there's a certain actor who wants to have purity of performance, he/she is probably not in the right production, right?
(Laughs) That's true. I actually have a couple members of my cast that very strongly feel that way. However, they are super professional insofar as that world is not happening around them.
They're able to shut it out?
Yeah. There is no one else there. They are just there having their scene.