Mystery Cafe

Mystery Cafe started in the basement of a dive bar in Central Square, Cambridge (near Boston) in April, 1987. I was one of the original cast members. We had no idea what we were doing. We all kind of collaborated on how we would work a three course meal into a participatory murder mystery comedy.

There were no interactive dinner theaters around yet, there was no template for any of this stuff.

Anyway, our "theater" sat about 70 people. We hired a guy from Syria who spoke no English to cater the shows. We came up with the idea of "Bribe Money" as a way to make people feel more comfortable engaging the actors. We didn't add the "Clue Packets" until a couple weeks after we opened.

I remember us thinking that if everything went well we could do four shows a month. We could all make an extra fifty bucks a week, and have some fun doing what we all loved; making people laugh.

Within a month we were doing eight sold-out shows a week and looking for a second location. One night there was a language mix up with our caterer, and we had to serve seventy people Big Macs and fries.