Cruising for an audience for Play 2

Oliver Driver is picking up patrons in clubs for Play 2, theatre's take on nightlife, writes arts editor LINDA HERRICK.

If a tall, rather intense-looking man approaches you in a nightclub and makes an offer, do not be alarmed. Over the next couple of weeks, Auckland Theatre Company's Oliver Driver reckons he will cruise the clubs giving away ... theatre tickets.

Driver is the director of 2econd Unit, the ATC's training and educational resource, and it's part of his strategy to lure clubbers into a new kind of darkened room, DJs and live music and all, except this "club" is called Play 2.

"I was in a club looking around, thinking these are the people I want to come to the theatre," says Driver.

"I want to make theatre for my generation - the people who are aged between 20 and 35. I'm not interested in Beckett, Miller, Williams - I'm sure I would have been if I'd been around when they were writing those plays.

"A woman in theatre in London said to me if people aren't into what you make in theatre, find out what they're into and put it into what you make."

2econd Unit decided to devise a work for a large cast.

"We don't get to do much for the development of actors in 2econd Unit and there are no plays for heaps of actors, unless we did a kind of young person's version of 12 Angry Men," Driver explains.

"So we started with the cast and held open auditions at the end of last year. We got around 120-130 actors who came in, then we got it down to about 30 people and we did a huge workshop with nine writers."

Numbers like that are just not sensible to work with, so the cast was eventually settled at 14 - seven boys, seven girls - and three writers: Oscar Kightley, Jodie Molloy and Jacques Strauss. The theme: one night in Auckland City, from 9pm until dawn the next day.

"At times it has been a mind-f*** to keep a handle on it," says Driver. "On the first day of rehearsal we got the actors to come along with four different characters and then we picked the one we liked the best or found the most interesting.

"Then we started to put them in lots of different situations where the actors would improvise - we picked actors who were good strong improvisers - and then it started to come together."

DJs Silverbeat and Timmy Schumacher are spinning the sounds for Play 2, while studio-whizzes KOG Transmissions are doing the "look" with video.

Don McGlashan is also helping out with a cast singalong and there's even a reference to Gael Ludlow's Love Songs programme on Classic Hits and, gulp, that Chris de Burgh horror, Lady In Red.

With an all-up budget of $100,000, including contras and sponsorship, already paid for, Play 2 is under no box-office pressure.

That's why Driver and his mates are able to give tickets to people who would normally say, "Nah, I don't do theatre" and, according to Driver's dream, "start to build and develop new audiences".

* Play 2, Maidment Studio Theatre, opens Wednesday, October 9; Wed-Sat at 7pm; extra shows on Friday and Saturdays at 10.30pm.