Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights.
Suite 524's Pop Up Dinner Theater will be offered twice this Sunday evening in New York City.
The performances, at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. on November 23 at Barlume Downstairs, will feature four courses and four short plays custom-made for this venue.
The plays are The Cowboy by Michael Sharp, Peekos at Barlume by Sandi Farkas, Fine Dining by Eduardo Machado, and See the Forest by Michael Domitrovich. All but Farkas are co-founders of Suite 524.
Suite 524, a New York-based nonprofit theater studio devoted to preserving the power of live performance in the age of AI, said it is seeking "to reinvigorate the forms of pop-up restaurants and dinner theater, providing deep satisfaction and catharsis, and emphasizing the power and transformation that happens when people get together in the same space to eat good food and watch new plays."
It also said the dinner theater performances will provide "an alternative to the traditional structures of American theatrical creation, development and exhibition by offering innovative performances in non-traditional settings. At the heart of the studio is The Generator, (a) unique approach to creating new work, which fuses theatrical craft with intuitive and meditative practices to make theater that is relevant, transformative and healing. The company believes that it's more necessary than ever to create spaces that preserve the sacred relationship between theater makers and audiences."
Pop Up Dinner Theater will feature performances by Mateo d'Amato, Timothy Doyle, Amelia Gwaltney, Ellis Charles Hoffmeister, Sarah Jordan Hupper, Michaela Lind, Brian Reese, Paulina Singer, Sharon Ullrick, Nikki Valdez and Drew Valins.
Eduardo Machado is a co-founder and artistic director of Suite 254; Michael Domitrovich is a co-founder and programs director; Mateo d'Amato is a co-founder and managing director; and Michael Sharp is a co-founder and and executive director.
Pop Up Dinner Theater is presented by LDV Hospitality, a global hospitality company offering restaurant and cocktail bar experiences; LDV is an acronym for "la dolce vita," "the good life" in Italian. Barlume Downstairs is a subterranean cocktail club at 900 Broadway in Manhattan.
In an interview with Forbes.com, Domitrovich said Suite 524 is seeking to create "innovative, unique ways of doing theater effectively, but without the bloated schedules and budgets that most plays get tied up in, and without compromising the quality of the theater, really giving people the 'downtown New York method acting' theatrical experience."
He also said going forward Suite 524 plans to focus on education, offering classes in writing and acting "that will be in our approach."
Suite 524 said its Generator process unfolds over six to eight weeks, yielding "two full-length plays (or four one-acts) each session. Each Generator begins with a training to establish a common language and approach, designed to expose the actors and writers to intuitive and mystical aspects of their instruments which they might not be tapping into fully or consciously. We then gather regularly to write as a company, based on Machado's prompts, with the actors reading and developing the writer's work as soon as it is written."