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BUCHANAN — The Tin Shop Theatre is ready for its next production, one in which it hopes will give audience members the opportunity to test their trivia knowledge during an evening of laughs.

The historic theater, located at 108 E. Roe St., will be performing “GAME SHOW,” an interactive theater experience. Recommended for ages 16-and-up, showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Dec. 8, 9, 15, 16 and 4 p.m. Dec. 10 and 17. Tickets cost $15 for general admission and $8 for children 12 and under.

Directed by Marty and Wendy Golob and co-written by Jeffrey Finn and Bob Walton, GAME SHOW is set during a “live broadcast” of a fictional, long-running TV game show and places the theater audience in the role of the TV studio audience, in which members are picked as the contestants to play the trivia-based game and win actual prizes. Audience members do not have to participate if they do not wish to do so.

“It is 90 minutes of immersion,” said Marty Golob. “No intermission. It’s a great distraction. With all the hustle and bustle, giving yourself the opportunity to step away, relax and do something unrelated is refreshing.”

The cast includes:

In addition to watching and playing during the “broadcast”– where anything can and does happen – the audience also witnesses all the backstage, back-stabbing antics “behind the scenes” that go on during the “commercial breaks” of GAME SHOW.

“What happens during the commercial breaks are all the workings of a live television broadcast and some Shakespearean-level backstabbing, plotting and planning that goes on behind the scenes,” Golob said. “The audience gets to watch that action unfold as well. It really becomes a tangle of who is trying to get the better of whom.”

Marty and Wendy Golob have been producing shows in Southwest Michigan for more than 20 years. For them, the local theater scene is one of the best aspects of Southwest Michigan life.

“Sunsets are great and beaches are fine, but to have the breadth and depth of arts we have in this corner of the states is great. With all of the live theater we’ve got – the Tin Shop, Twin City Players, Beckwith, Ghost Light – and all of the things we have going for us in this small, highly agricultural corner of Michigan, we rival Chicago for the things we have available to us at arm’s length. For $15, you can see live theater. That’s just a fantastic sell point. 

“If we didn’t have the arts in this region that we do, it would get boring pretty quick. It’s a wonderful, economical, deep and exciting group of arts that we have in the community.”

Tickets can be purchased at the door or online.