The Smiling Siren
This large, but plain-looking, stone and mudbrick building stands in the center of a block of shops and apartments, in the fork of its own access street, Siren Lane. It's home to a company of popular local actors who can perform everything from rowdy comedy (their stock in trade) to high tragedy.
Nobles often hire the place for an evening for exclusive performances involving the actors and actresses saying and doing what the noble always wanted them to in a particular play rather than the way it was written. Such private performances of ten involve risque audience participation or private jokes - or even entirely new (sometimes wretched) plays, written by the noble who's hired the company.
More often, however, the Siren is home to traveling troupes of vaudeville jugglers, comedians, and nearly nude dancers or burlesque dancers. When these aren't available, the theater company performs - usually a weekly revue consisting of time-honored gag routines and sketches rewritten to include references to daily happenings and current jokes.
Admission varies from 4 cp/head to 6 sp/head, depending on who or what is performing. Famous bards are the most expensive - and fastest sellout draws. The take is split evenly between theater and performers. The theater in all cases provides heating via warm flue pipes fed by a hearth under the stage, lighting (usually glowing globes) and security. Most traveling troupes charge from 2 tp to 8 tp/head (1 sp/head if burlesque dancers are involved). The weekly revue put on by the locals is always 4 cp.
Before and between performances, the place is used for drinking and dancing to live music, sometimes with show dancers on the stage. Ale is 3 cp per tankard, stout is 6 cp, and zzar or wine is sold by the bottle, at 7 tp each.
Proprietor: Perendel Wintamer, a young, earnest, mustachioed mage, runs this nightclub. He often must use his spells to clear birds out of the dark upper reaches of the building.
