KEY POINTS:
Writing allows a person to transcend their world and consider other realities, says award-winning playwright, author and poet Vivienne Plumb. So when she decided to write a play about teenage boys, Plumb was excited rather than daunted by the challenge of having to think herself into an adolescent man's world.
The result is The Cape, a road-trip story set in 1994 when Eb, Arthur, Mo and Jordyn decide to get out of the city and drive from Wellington to Cape Reinga.
Each of the boys has a secret which is revealed along the way. Dealing with the fallout - sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking - forces the boys to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves, their friends and the reality of life.
Plumb set the story in 1994 because it was a significant year musically with the growth of grunge music and the death of Kurt Cobain, but also one of surprising innocence.
"There weren't mobile phones allowing kids instant and widespread communication with one another; there wasn't the problem with hard drugs like P."
She wanted to explore the way young men communicate and the importance of friendship in their lives. She also hoped audiences would think about the "very difficult" transition from child and adulthood.
The Cape was inspired by her own son, William, and his friends.
"Seeing them together made me want to write something about young guys and the way they talk to each other and form close friendships.
"People make out that young guys don't communicate; that women are the communicators. I don't think that is true at all. I think men communicate in different ways but that contact, that camaraderie, is vitally important to them. I don't think much has been written which explores this."
William died in 2002, aged 27, after a 10-year battle with Hodgkin's disease (cancer of the lymph glands).
Plumb started writing The Cape in 2005 and says while it is not William's story, it uses material from interviews with his friends and her observations of them.
It also draws on her own life. Leaving her Sydney home at the age of 16 to travel around New South Wales with a troupe of performers, Plumb admits she had some hair-raising experiences.
"I was quite a rebellious teenager - but always interested in the arts."
She has written a number of short stories, poems and plays, winning an impressive cache of awards: the 1993 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award for Love Knots, the Hubert Church Award for a first book of fiction for The Wife Who Spoke Japanese in her Sleep, the Buddle Finlay Sargeson Fellowship in 2001 and an international writing residency at the University of Iowa in 2004.
Plumb won the inaugural Rotorua Writer's Residency last year and spent the time working on short stories.
The Cape premiered at Wellington's Circa Theatre last year with Michael Whalley, who plays Mo, receiving the Chapman Tripp award for Best Male Newcomer. He is happy to reprise the role for the Auckland production, saying it is exciting to have the opportunity to breathe new life into a familiar character.
The other three cast members - Damien Harrison, Dane Dawson and James Kara - are new to the roles. The Auckland production also has a new director, Celia Nicholson.
The Cape will be performed in Christchurch later this year and Plumb says she is considering a sequel about what happened to the boys after 1994.
PERFORMANCE
What: The Cape
Where and when: Herald Theatre, February 8-March 1
