You’ve got a night out in NYC. You want to experience avant-garde song, dance, theatre, and and five courses of great eats. How many venues will you have to go to? Perhaps only one: seek out this week’s featured member organization, Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant.

Conni’s is a theatre ensemble that presents delicious home-cooked meals through staged performances. Audiences are seated at banquet tables within a social dinner party setting and enter the world of a restaurant as it would be run by a troupe of visionary artists of the avant-garde theatre, all devout followers of the legendary, if not mysterious, grande dame of the stage, Miss Conni Convergence. The restaurant’s main events are held approximately every 6-8 weeks from September to May at Brooklyn’s Bushwick Starr, and follow seasonal themes.

Producing director Connie Hall took a break from preparing the restaurant’s upcoming “April Showers Supper” to offer some insights into what a night at Miss Conni’s is like…

Connie, I have to ask you, as a native Mainer, about the connection, mentioned on your website, between Conni’s and Stonington, Maine…

The group came together while in residence for a summer 2006 performance of “As You Like It” at The Stonington Opera House. The “Conni’s Restaurant” sign that has become our physical emblem and our logo came from a diner in Stonington that was abandoned and for sale during our tenure there. We fantasized about purchasing the place, asking “What would happen if a group of downtown New York theatre artists took over a restaurant? Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant — the running joke — was born. Once we got back to New York, we decided to try the idea as the concept for a show.

Early in each of your shows, there is a song that lays down “the rules”, and declares, “This is not dinner theatre!” What sets the experience at Conni’s apart from dinner theatre?

The distinction usually earns us a laugh, but there is more than a hint of truth in it.

The characters who inhabit the Restaurant consider themselves geniuses of the avant-garde theatre, and have a healthy disdain for dinner theatre as a genre, which they associate with canned scripts and mediocre food — it’s not us, it’s them!

When people think of dinner theatre, usually they think of the food and entertainment as being separate entities. At Conni’s, we exploit the theatricality of serving and sharing a meal to its fullest potential. The performers themselves originate, cook and serve the meal. We use fresh, local ingredients and we make it with care. The food becomes part of the source material and subject matter for the evening’s performance.

At the beginning of each Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant performance, the performers recite “Restaurant Rules” which turn the service industry on its head. The Rules serve to orient the audience to the unusual experience they are about to have, kind of like buckling your seat belt for an amusement park ride.

It’s difficult to run a great restaurant. It’s difficult to pull together a great musical. What’s the key to doing both simultaneously?

Flexible, brave, generous, multi-talented writer/performers who all feel a sense of responsibility to the audience and who own the entire experience. We rehearse the scripted material and musical numbers as if we were mounting a more traditional show, but the format for the evening leaves plenty of room to improvise, be spontaneous and show our humanity (read: flaws).

Who do you think your shows appeal to?

Fun-lovers. Or people who eat food.

In all seriousness, we have found that some of the strongest responses to the show have come from people who are not regular theatre-goers. While the material is very specific to the theatre, it appeals to a broad audience. We like to make people laugh.

What has been your (or Conni’s) greatest success to date?

We have stayed together for three years.

Now… as far as Miss Conni is concerned, it is impossible to narrow the scope and impact of her achievements down to just one petty success. Quite simply put, Miss Conni Convergence has changed our collective understanding of what theatre is, of what it is to share an experience with one’s fellow human beings, of what it is to be. While many artists merely hold up a mirror, Miss Conni holds up a prism through which we see refracted the multitudinous glorious possibilities of our better selves.

Can you share one of your favorite recipes, if only by name?

Miss Conni’s famous ham fried in maple syrup. It should be sweet and sticky. Take a ham steak. Cut it up. Fry it in maple syrup longer than you think you should.

What motivated you to become a member of Fractured Atlas and how do you use your membership?

I joined Fractured Atlas in 2001 originally for the health insurance. I now utilize your fiscal sponsorship as well as your special event insurance for Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant.

What’s next on your plate?

Next up for Conni’s is our performance April 24-26 at the Bushwick Starr. We plan to debut a Restaurant production of Hamlet in September. For me personally, I am writing a business plan to create a catering hall/performance venue that is built around the same conceits as Conni’s.

Peruse the menu, read reviews from Time Out New York and LoftLife, and learn more about Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant on their website: avantgarderestaurant.com.

Photos by Vincent Sacco, LoftLife magazine.