NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Pic­ture this: You walk in­to a restau­rant wear­ing your Sun­day best and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be­come part of the cast for a the­atri­cal per­for­mance. While you wine and dine, you and those at your ta­ble try to solve a mys­tery by the end of the night. Well, you can ex­pe­ri­ence this in a few weeks. Lo­cal per­form­ing arts com­pa­ny Teatro Journee will host its first din­ner the­atre ex­pe­ri­ence ti­tled Served—a comedic mur­der mys­tery.

The event, which promis­es to be a night of el­e­gance and en­ter­tain­ment, will be held at the Samaan Es­tate in St Clair on Au­gust 8.

The group’s founder and lead pro­duc­er Ta­far Lewis-Ben­jamin told WE that it was an idea she had years ago, re­call­ing hav­ing been an ac­tress in an­oth­er din­ner the­atre in 2018. That pro­duc­tion was writ­ten by her friend and play­wright Gabrielle Scott, who al­so wrote Served.

“I’ve al­ways loved the idea of im­mer­sive the­atre,” Lewis-Ben­jamin beamed. “And be­cause I cur­rent­ly lec­ture at UWI part-time, and I do a lot of teach­ing, there’s a sur­plus of stu­dents com­ing out in the arts but not enough jobs. So I al­ways de­cid­ed to be on this side of the ta­ble where we could tie cre­ativ­i­ty with job cre­ation.” This, she added, is some­thing she is ex­treme­ly pas­sion­ate about.

Ex­plain­ing that the play will ex­plore the top­ic of al­co­holism, she said plan­ning be­gan late last year and re­hearsals kicked off at the end of May this year.

From the time guests en­ter the room, they will no longer just be pa­trons but be­come part of the sto­ry. There will be clues for every­one to try to fig­ure out who com­mit­ted the mur­der. “It’s al­most like you’re play­ing a game where you al­most have your cards and are try­ing to fig­ure things out,” she said.

As for the food, a three-course meal will be served, blend­ing Ital­ian and Caribbean cuisines. There will al­so be live en­ter­tain­ment fea­tured with­in the show, in­clud­ing Sound Check–a group of boys who are learn­ing to DJ. “So it’s a well-cu­rat­ed event for the com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

And com­mu­ni­ty is some­thing that’s very im­por­tant to Teatro Journee. In fact, Lewis Ben­jamin said when she found­ed the group in 2013, they start­ed with cul­tur­al arts camps for chil­dren in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Cul­ture. “It was re­al­ly about be­ing able to give peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly from (a young age) to know what they would like when it comes to the arts. It was about ed­u­ca­tion with the in­clu­sion of art.”

And in keep­ing with that, a per­cent­age of the prof­its from the event will be do­nat­ed to the DENT Foun­da­tion–a girls’ em­pow­er­ment group–to as­sist with ac­cess to ther­a­py/psy­choso­cial ser­vices.

“As women, we see how good it would have been if we could have got­ten that type of sup­port when we were younger,” she said. “They re­al­ly work with young girls and pro­vide a space for them to learn, train, feel safe, learn dif­fer­ent so­cial skills… They do ex­cel­lent work and this is why we want to be aligned with them in this way and give back.”

She said re­hearsals for the event have been go­ing well and they are ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ing tak­ing at­ten­dees on the the­atri­cal jour­ney. “It’s a lot of work, of course, but it’s very ex­cit­ing and we love what we do and we are hap­py to make the­atre.

So if you’re in­ter­est­ed in din­ing and be­com­ing a one-night de­tec­tive to fig­ure out who­dun­nit, dress el­e­gant­ly and classy and get your tick­ets in hand.