Planning Your Private Party
We recommend you contact us with your date as soon as possible. You should start planning your party at least six weeks in advance. If possible, have three or four people in a little committee – it will be more fun and you will get more creative ideas about who to cast in which part.
Remember we need a minimum of 35 people so it is important for you to invite enough people so you get that minimum.
Selecting Your Theme – Do Your Guests Like To Dress Up?
The main thing to consider when selecting a theme is if you think your group will like to dress up or not. Here are the themes currently available:
- Pirate and the Rock and Roll. These parties include characters that are pretty easy to dress for. Anything will work if you are in a rock band or a roadie, etc. And it doesn’t take much to come up with a pirate outfit.
- Soap Opera: The Soap Opera is also easy, since it is usually basic business attire (think Days of Our Lives or As the World Turns). Ladies usually wear a lot more jewelry at these events and dress up a bit more than typical business attire, but the guys usually wear a coat and nice shirt or tie.
- Holiday Party: The holiday party has some parts where people can come in business attire because their character is from the town adjacent to the North Pole called Frigid. So Frigid has a mayor and some of the characters own the businesses that support Santa’s workshop by providing goods and services. So if somebody hates dressing up, make them the mayor of Frigid or Harry the Heater Guy or some other business person from Frigid. But the holiday party also has elves, reindeer and all of Santa’s friends, including the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. So some people will probably spend some time on their outfits.
- Science Fiction: The science fiction party typically has the most creative outfits that are usually made out of tin foil or bizarre homemade stuff. If your group likes to be creative, this is the party for you!
Selection of Characters
Assign Parts from Casting List: You will be given a casting list when you book the party. The casting list just has a few sentences about each character, and notes if they are major characters, minor characters or bit parts. You can either assign the parts yourself or you can allow people to select the characters themselves. If you do it, it is best to get a few people who know everybody together ahead of time to brainstorm who should play what part.
Somebody will usually ask if they can “just watch.” Sorry, but the answer is no. We have promised everybody this is a party, not a performance. There is no audience. Just tell the people who are shy or not outgoing that they can take a minor character or bit part.
Distribution of Character Summaries
Although people have been assigned parts based on the casting list, the character summary is the detailed information – it tells them who their character knows, what the character has done recently and if they are the killer. People should receive their character summaries no later than a week before the party. This will allow them time to study their part and decide how they want to dress for the event.
There are several ways to get the character summaries to the participants:
- We can provide you the parts via email and you can forward to everyone.
- We can provide hard copies of the parts and you can distribute them by hand.
Give us an excel list of each person with their email and phone number. (We will only call them if the email doesn’t work.) We will distribute the parts for you.
Host Duties At The Event
At the event, the host should also play a character. If the host doesn’t have a lot of help at the event, then he/she should take a minor character or bit part. But if the host has support, then he/she should participate like everybody else.
We want the host to have a good time too! See you at your party!
