Northeast Players, the theater club at Northeast Community College is hard at work. The Life Long Learning Center doors open at 7 p.m. sharp on October 17 and the club members need to be ready to perform their production of Sweeney Todd. The Northeast Players have to do even more theater work than usual because they decided to make the show into a dinner theater.

Production Manager Patrick Brown says that in a dinner theater, people come in, sit down, and eat. After people are finished eating, or are at least finishing up, the show begins. It is a more formal version of dinner and a show.

The dinner theater is purely a fundraiser for the theater club. They went in with the idea that they would not spend a dime of their own money; instead relying on donations and the ingenuity of the club members. The money they make will go to fund a trip to the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) next year and also educational workshops they want to put together.

The theater club chose Sweeney Todd because it is a name that people are familiar with, even if they do not know what the show is about. Brown says the name draws people in and it is also a little more of a challenge because the audience will have a higher expectation for a show that they have heard of than some little-known production.

Dinner theaters are growing in popularity here at Northeast. Clue Done It was the first dinner theater the club put together. The show was basically one big game of Clue. Last year’s show, Café Murder, which was especially fun for the audience, brought in more than eighty people. They got to be a part of the show by questioning the actors during the performance.

Rehearsals started the first week of September. “It’s a lot of work,” said Brown. “There’s a lot of challenges, especially when you’re not planning on spending money. We definitely hit our little obstacles. It’s a lot of fun, though. You get to make friends and learn things.”

Sweeney Todd is the infamous story of Benjamin Barker, a.k.a Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop in London which is the basis for a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett. Her meat pies contain a secret ingredient.

The Northeast Players are serving chili, salad, cinnamon rolls, and dessert.  The price of attendance for K-12 students and Northeast students and staff with IDs is $10.  The price for other adults is $15.