Make a sandwich in Bed-Stuy with 20 people at this live performance

Traditionally, the sandwich has been a pragmatic enterprise, something made for clean and tidy consumption. But if you make a sandwich enormous, that pragmatism disappears, and the sandwich becomes an event.

This is the idea behind Big Sandwich, a performance-slash-dinner party that layers theater, camp and interactive play between four courses of food.

A promotional email ended with the following provocation: “We hope you can make it to the sandwich…or is it a show?…Yes!”

The inaugural Big Sandwich took place at Rita & Maria, a café in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on a recent Sunday night. Twenty diners – seats were ticketed – sat around five tables, unsure of what would come next. On each table was a sealed purple envelope, printed with the words “spread sheet,” which would make sense later.

Attendees knew they were there for a sandwich and some sort of performance from their hosts: Peter Smith, a performance artist; Eleonore Condo, a writer and actress; and Hunter Speese, a producer and TV showrunner.

What followed was a four course meal — hors d’oeuvres, soup, sandwich, dessert — with speeches and acting and audience participation offered as a palate cleanser between each course.

The idea began fomenting last summer, when Condo was brainstorming what to cook for a going-away party for Smith, who was leaving for an acting gig in Santa Barbara.

They first met at theater camp when they were 14, and have long co-hosted elaborate dinner parties.

For Condo’s 25th birthday, in 2016, they cooked a “monochromatic meal,” where each course was a different color: black fruit salad, pink charcuterie plate and green pasta.

“I was like, what if I make some huge sandwiches? I knew Peter would love that,” Condo recalled over a spread of big sandwiches (from Anthony & Sons Panini Shoppe) at Smith’s kitchen table. The going-away sandwiches were a hit, she said.