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The clock is ticking. You know the one. It’s the little time bomb embedded in your cell phone, or if you’ve got some style, a mid-century modern sundial piece hanging above the flatscreen TV. Either way, as you open your door to greet the friendly Fed-Ex delivery person, the clock strikes and you are reminded that… 

Your Room Service Experience is arriving today! 

 You thank them for their services and kick the door shut, trembling with excitement. Don’t try and pry open the box with your fingernails, there is enough time to grab a pocket knife. For goodness sake, don’t get a paper cut.  

 The first thing you’ll see is an envelope marked “Open Immediately”. DO NOT disregard this. The game has already begun. But WHY NOW, you ask? 

 Let us demure…what comes to mind when you think of Room Service? Delicious food and drink, of course! And if you’re looking for the perfect date-night idea,  dessert in particular. You can be sure that your Room Service Experience contains both. This is not the stuff of a supermarket aisle. It has been handmade with love mere days before your friendly FedEx delivery person came a knocking.  

In fact, this dessert and drink combination has been concocted by our chef to pair with the mystery experience inside the box! It may even contain a piece of evidence! This type of sensual storytelling is what Nordo is best known for.  

And so you must, absolutely, open that envelope and read the instructions on how best to preserve your edible delicacies. They will keep for a few more hours (up to 48 in the refrigerator.) The game itself will last forever, with our mystery-boxes you can press stop, rewind, or play again  - that’s the beauty of cinematic Room Service.  

In conclusion, you’ve got plenty of time to throw on a fetching pair of fuzzy slippers and alert your nearest and dearest that Nordo has arrived.  

All of our Room Service box experiences come with mystery, intrigue, drinks, and a delicious dessert, but we know an imaginative dinner levels the whole evening up! With all game players, mystery lovers, and intrigue seekers at heart, we’ve got a fun menu planned for your "Curiouser & Curiouser: The Interrogation of Alice" tea party experience.

The Nordo kitchen is always committed to going completely over the top, and we want you to do the same, even if you’re a thousand miles away from our little workshop. The primary ingredients you need for this particular spin on the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is a teapot, teacups, and a fun cookie cutter. 

Because, really, you could use canned soup and bologna sandwiches. 

But even better! Get yourself some soft white bread, (we like Japanese Milk Bread, or Shokupan.) Make a thin spread of our Mama Lil’s Pimento Cheese spread and a layer of thinly sliced cucumber, and then punch it out into your cookie cutter shape. (We used a butterfly!) You can eat the cut out ends while you’re fixing everything up…it’s the chef’s snack! You need sustenance if you are going to solve the future crimes of Alice!

We made a summery heirloom tomato and corn soup to serve in the teapot, but a wintery squash soup would be delicious with the sandwiches as well. They key is to blend it well, (we have a Vitamix in Nordo’s kitchen, but I use my little NutriBullet at home where counterspace is a premium,) and then put it through a fine mesh strainer. This is how you get what we call “the texture of luxury.” :-P

Mama Lil’s Pimento Cheese Spread

• 8 oz Room Temperature Cream Cheese

• 4 oz Sharp Cheddar Cheese Shredded (you’ve gotta shred it yourself, pre-shredded won’t be as smooth.

• 3 oz Mama Lil’s Peppers with oil (don’t be fussy about draining it, the oil is <chef’s kiss>)

Mix with a food processor until fluffy and smooth.

Heirloom Tomato, Corn, and Coconut Soup

• 2 T olive onion

• 1 yellow onion

• 3 cloves garlic

• 2.5 lbs heirloom tomatoes cut into ½ inch pieces

• ½ lb fresh corn kernals (frozen will work in a wintery pinch)

• ¼ teaspoon hotsauce

• 1 T salt, more to taste

• ½ cup coconut milk

• 1 T sherry vinegar

Instructions

• Sweat the onions over medium low in olive oil

• Add garlic

• Cook until translucent

• Add salt, tomatoes & corn

• Simmer medium-low for 30 minutes or until tomatoes have completely broken down

• Add sherry vinegar

• Salt to taste

• Blend until very smooth

• Add coconut milk 

• Serve in a teapot!

Opening Night is a special brand of chaos. It looks different for every arts organization, but for Nordo it’s an undeniable feeling in the air – we’re going to have an audience. An audience that will intimately know every movement of a performer in our uniquely long space. We have to serve them, feed them, keep them entertained, and (hopefully) sufficiently buzzed from our impeccably poured wine or cocktail selections. We have to keep track of them to be sure we don’t start a new act while they’re getting some air or visiting the loo. We maintain organized chaos from dining room to green room; a kitchen staff, servers, performers, band members, and bartenders running trays, staying hydrated, doing costume changes, clearing silverware. And above all, somehow, we have to keep the integrity of the theatrical experience: All those secrets that keep things running smoothly and maintain the mystery of a seamless transition with some amazing, pulse-racing moment of art that we will all remember time and time again. The magic of theater. The magic of Nordo.

It’s been 495 days since we experienced our last Opening Night, Sara Porkalob’s The Angel in the House. It’s been 237 days since we hosted our last dinner re-opening event in the space, Bloody Delicious.

It is a strange feeling for us to be Re-Opening without an Opening Night. We are most known, after all, for immersive dinner theater experiences that guide you through an evening of storytelling and culinary complexity. We even found a way to bring an evening out at Nordo to your living room with our Room Service Experiences during the darkness that was this past year. What we have discovered, however, is that when we are provided the opportunity (or faced with restrictive guidelines) to focus on the menu, the food itself simply shines.

So what is there to be celebrated about a Re-Opening rather than an Opening Night? Well, we are able to highlight our musicians as major players in the ambience we aim for. We’re able to really curate a unique and local menu that has fewer boundaries than is usually introduced when creating a multi-course meal themed around a show.

But regardless of circumstance, without fail every single time, the most thrilling and important part about opening Nordo’s doors is having you with us.

Our communities have gone through so many ups and downs in the past two years alone, and there is more change yet to come – but we believe in that special feeling when we are able to swing open our big bay windows, seat you at your table, and smile as our space springs to life in all its’ glory with your presence. What we’ve missed most of all in the midst of these uncertain times has been our ability to host you, to share our space and experiences with you. And now, in a season where change is undeniable and transformation awaits us around every corner, we’re here to host you once again. It may be under different circumstances, we may need to wait a little while for our next been Opening Night experience, but there is no denying that this Re-Opening brings an entirely fresh feeling of excitement. The menu calls for fresh, local, seasonal offerings that remind us that change is the most natural part of our existence; while our private party rooms and Chessboard dining room make spaces where our celebratory dinner of transformation is not to be shared alone.

We’ll see you at the theater!

The Nordo Team

by Terry Podgorski

I love picking a genre or a class or an aspect of culture and putting it through the ringer whether I like it or not. Nothing is above a good joke. And so, while I may - like a good Wiccan - prefer my dates written as if Halloween were the beginning of the year, or have crystals for protection beside my cat’s water bowl, I loved putting it all on its head for our 2018 show The Witching Hour. The entire point was to expose the humor behind a person who believes in runes (Viking runes, Norse runes, all the runes!) tarot card decks, and casting spells, throw in a little truth lurking behind the supernatural, and toss it in a salad. 

 Which is all to say when years later we were brainstorming what would

become our next Room Service Experience, there was no doubt in our minds:

The Witching Hour, baby! I immediately thought of Ronnie Hill’s performance as Head Adept and Magician of the Dark Arts, William Wescott, a character as learned and

scholarly as he is bad at magic. Of course we thought of our beautiful monsters based on the human fears. I particularly thought of the Fear of Loneliness, so hauntingly portrayed by one of my favorite actors in town, Tatiana Pavela, with a stunning costume design by Fantasia Rose and Indira Shlag. I couldn’t WAIT to pull that sucker out of the plastic bin that has been hanging out in our storage space and put Tatiana back in that perfect witchy makeup.

But most of all, I thought of crystals, and candles, and spells. I thought about delivering my ideal date night, where velvet bags are opened over craft cocktails, and spells cast one by one to reveal a story about the human condition. And savory pie. And monster comedies. (Mon-Coms for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans.)

Plus, it’s fun to watch actors play a human in one Act and the monster that represents their deepest Fear the next. So we’re bringing it back, and to get us all in the mood for the cursed and strange, we thought we’d share our Nordo’s Musings from the original show:

Watch:

Clue - First one guest, then another, and another until we have a colorful mob of personalities that don’t care one whit about one another as they chase the MacGuffin. What’s a better way to start a tale on a dark and stormy night.

The Witches of Eastwick - Well, when a bunch of witches decided to summon the devil, and then they have to deal with the consequences. It’s classic. It’s the crux of so many dramas. And a few comedies.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The supernatural never landed so squarely in camp so well. Throw in the troubles of adolescence, the problems with public education, and a mandate the save the world from demons and vampires and you have a cultural hit.

Read:

Ray Bradbury short stories from “Quicker than the Eye” and “October Country”- These stories were not read for the comedy but for the unfettered strange worlds that he opened up in his writing. He touched ghosts and alternate worlds and twisted timelines and most notably brought Science Fiction into the mainstream.

“The Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman- Monsters. Monsters. Monsters. And the most excellent telling of monsters just down the road that anyone has attempted to do. Clean fantasy.

  “Practical Demonkeeping” by Christopher Moore- I find comedy a hard thing to do in novels. The gimmick invariably gets old I think, and the same joke just goes on forever. Even the famed Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy Trilogy got a bit old on books 4 & 5. (Don’t let Douglas Adams hear that I said that.) And well, Lamb by Christopher Moore may be just one of the best comedies in novel form there is. But that was about the life of Jesus or his best friend, and I needed a comedy about monsters so I hit up this one. It’s good. Not Lamb. But good.

“Gothic Grimoire” by Konstantinos- This started the whole thing really. Wandering around a New Age crystal shop, thumbing through the literature looking for themes and situations to use, I found this dark gem of spells from New York City. Self-help sublimely smashes into the dark arts.

Wander in New Age crystal shop and peruse books when you can wander a New Age crystal shop again.

Listen:

            “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden

            “Gold Dust Woman” by Fleetwood Mac

            “Life On Mars” by David Bowie. Always listen to David Bowie. Please.

Fact:   

According to books on the properties of stones, meteorite does help a person speak to aliens. Also, the “Gothic Grimoire” is a real book written by a real person named Konstantinos who lives in New York City and likes Gothic chanting. It says so on the back.

The 20/21 theater season, like almost everything in the past year, has been anything but typical. Across the world the marquees went dark as we were forced to close down live performances for the greater good. But we have seen such a font of creativity and innovation from our always scrappy theater world colleagues, which has been inspiring in a time when there was little to look forward to.

Almost a year later we’ve certainly thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall. From the launch of our Retro-Dinners this summer, (followed almost immediately by a new spike in Covid cases that caused us to abort that project,) to a wine delivery program, to live, at-home cooking classes this has been a time of reinvention and even play. 

In the spring, after we closed The Angel in the House, in the midst of climbing infection rates in King County, the safety of Nordo’s staff and patrons became a serious concern and the question was raised: How do we bring Nordo into our audiences’ homes in a safe, contact free way?

And how do we stay true to our core values: creating exciting art that celebrates food, drink and storytelling?

Instead of pivoting outside the box, Nordo literally turned into it, and Nordo’s Room Service was born.  

We’ve always been multi-sensory. That’s what makes this theater company different. We could not imagine an exclusively digital offering. If Nordo is coming to your home, we are coming with the tactile, the aromatic, the delicious. That means physical ephemera and delicious treats to couple with our digital media.

Nordo paired with game designer and film maker Daryle Conners in the summer of 2020 to tease out our trademark immersive storytelling and expand upon a ghost story we created in the fall of 2016. It felt perfect for the upcoming “cancelled” Halloween party season.

And so a new story was born on the back of the old, a story told through typewritten letters and gilded invitations, through poems as riddles, radio interviews, and original music.

We invited our audience to check in to the luxurious Hotel Nordo, built in the year 1927, and explore its haunted history in a multi-media, multi-sensory manner. In their homes. With craft cocktails and delectable desserts as accompaniment.

Nordo is defined by original storytelling, original music, food, and drink. The creativity of our storytelling and music has created a string of audience hits over the years. And our menus won our co-artistic director, Erin Brindley, a Seattle Weekly’s Best Chef award. And through the new Room Service program those stories and full dinner menus are now available to be consumed in your home. 

With sell out orders for Do Not Disturb, and increasing media attention for the following Holiday story box “Christmas of the Corn”, it became clear to us that there was untapped potential to expand the accessibility on a national scale. Nordo’s brand of storytelling can grow beyond Seattle, and make the future live performances in the Culinarium destination events like Meow Wolf or Sleep No More.

We know our audiences are longing to come home. We are all craving for the experiences we miss so much.  

However, our imaginations have not suffered the sting of Covid-19. We ae rising to the challenge, and believe that our new interactive and delivered storytelling can be just as inspiring and delicious as coming to table with strangers to live and breath the same story.

When we first ran this production in Fall of 2012 we named the show after one of the main songs written by our dear friend Drew Keriakedes (listen to Drew's tunes). It ran at Theatre Off Jackson in their relatively new upstairs venue after The Wing Luke moved out to their current location. It was one crazy show (cooking on griddles in a classroom!?). For some reason, no one, not even us, could remember the name. It just fell right out of the head. But in my journal this show was always called “Lost Falls”. So, when it came time to remount it the title changed.

 I was a junior in high school when Twin Peaks debuted. I thought it was talking to me. It had everything. Murder. Cheesy high school romance. One-eyed women staring out through the blinds. Red velvet curtains in a black and white checkered room. Illicit drugs in old train cars. And the supernatural lurking behind every corner. Quirky, friendly FBI agents? Who let this through the censors? In one fell swoop I feel it changed television writing.

 I retreated up to the town of Skykomish to write this one. I stayed in the inn there. It turns out that not three days before I arrived two men broke into the only bar in town, smashed and looted the ATM machine, and burned down the back half of the restaurant in their escape. One resident described seeing the getaway car speeding West on Hwy 2 as the flames leapt into the night sky. You see, with the bar gone, the tiny restaurant at the inn became the night time hanging place for all the town, and I got to belly up to the bar and listen to the entire saga. From multiple points of view. It turned out to be quite apt and quite inspiring though I’d rather not burn down or otherwise destroy a perfectly fine business every time I need to write a play.

 To live in this world and soak up all its strangeness was a dream come true. To this day it may be the most successful trippy, food dining experience ever. We’re in a diner. It’s morning. The body of the chef has been discovered in the kitchen. And all the courses look like breakfast, but they are dinner!

Watch: 

 Twin Peaks-  Well, you have to. Watch the whole thing. It gets a bit wonky in Season 2 when it was cancelled and then brought back to life by popular demand but deal with it. It brought surrealism into the living room. Would there be an X Files without Twin Peaks? Also, watch Fire Walk with Me, the movie prequel that came after the whole series ended. And then, fall down the rabbit hole of the newest 3rd season that came out three years ago on Showtime Twin Peaks: The Return.

Rashomon- A masterpiece by Akira Kurosawa, a genius of cinema. It won an Honorary Oscar in 1952. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg said it changed their ideas of movie making. And for me, it was the story told from 3 different points of view in which the truth lies, somewhere. “What is truth?” 

Scotland P.A.- Small town fast food restaurant tragedy. The Scottish play meets McDonalds. Murder in a fryer. If you haven’t seen this one yet, please, treat yourself. Never have the witches been done so well. And there’s a Christopher Walken in it. Done. 

Listen:

Don’t miss the Twin Peaks soundtrack. Littler, mid-sized, Terry used to fall asleep to this album in his dorm.

            “Twin Peaks Theme” by Angelo Badalamenti

            “Falling” by Julee Cruise

But also, Annastasia Workman murdered this score and the twin vocals of Evan Mosher and Devin Bannon were exquisite.

            “Nowhere Town” and “Spruce Tree” by Annastasia Workman

Read:

At the time, I can’t say that I read much fiction to prepare for writing this piece. It was a very cinematic driven script. But, there was a lot of non-fiction reading going on about fast food and the culture it sprouted in America.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser- Well, it’s all there. The gross, manufactured food and questionable business practices as people like William Rosenberg (Dunkin’ Donuts), Dave Thomas (Wendy’s), Glenn Bell (Taco Bell), and Harland Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken) spread across the highways of this country and almost snuffed out a local diner culture. Support your local diner! (When you can go back to restaurants.)

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan- And if you want some real facts for the fight against processed foods this is the place to start. Any book by Michael Pollen is worth the read.

The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost (co-writer of the series)- Well, if you want to be a proper nerd you should pick up a copy and dive into all the notes and alien landings and government conspiracies that could perhaps be swirling around the town of Twin Peaks. David Lynch was not a fan of the book, but so what.

Fact #1:

Nordo was murdered on Oct 12th, 1991.

Fact #2:

There was a giant beaver in this show. It appeared and tapped into the psyche of suspects. The beaver made someone kill Nordo. The beaver costume still hangs around the theater.

Fact #3:

The two mystical bikers, Ralph and Rocky, that became the one mystical biker in the second production may be my favorite character to write for.