BOOTLEGGER'S BALL Immerses Audiences in 1920s Seattle Speakeasy

This Halloween, Seattle's historic Odd Fellows Hall will reveal a few of its secrets. Bootlegger's Ball, a new immersive cocktail cabaret created by Opal Peachey, directed by Mark Siano, and produced by The Habit Productions, opens October 16 at Reverie Ballroom. The production transforms the historic Grand Ballroom into a 1920s speakeasy filled with live music, social dancing, aerial performance, craft cocktails, historic ghosts, and some of Seattle's most notorious iconic characters from the prohibition era.

The show marks an exciting new chapter for Reverie Ballroom following its 2025 transition from the former Century Ballroom. Bootlegger's Ball will also utilize a newly installed aerial performance point in the Grand Ballroom, expanding the possibilities for live performance expanding its reputation as an premiere event venue.

Inspired by Bradley Holden's Seattle Prohibition, the show imagines Seattle in 1924, when bootlegging royalty Roy and Elsie Olmstead gather the city's underground liquor operators for a grand Bootlegger's Ball. Roy wants to unite them under his rules and become king of Seattle's “Open City.” The city's other bootleggers have their own ideas.

The story moves through the contrasting worlds of Prohibition-era Seattle, from the Central District and Chinatown International District to Green Lake, Queen Anne, and the waterfront routes that brought Canadian liquor into the city.

“After seeing Seattle Vice, author Bradley Holden approached me about telling the story of Roy and Elsie Olmstead,” says Peachey. “As I researched the Olmsteads, I also became interested in everyone around them. Seattle wasn't one city during Prohibition. Every neighborhood had its own nightlife and its own relationship with the law.”

The building itself provided another character. During neighboring construction, a historic sign for Margaret Olson's School of Dance and Dramatic Arts was uncovered on the west side of Oddfellows. Olson once operated her dance school inside the building. In Bootlegger's Ball, her ghost still considers the ballroom hers—and has strong opinions about bootleggers renting her dancefloor.