IT’S theatre for those who’d sooner go to the pub.
Foxglove bar customers are in for something of a surprise when their watering hole hosts Auckland’s Silo theatre which is actively bringing theatre to the people.
A downtown bar might seem a surprising venue but Did I Believe It? is a collaboration with vodka makers 42below. The play’s director, Oliver Driver, says Silo wanted to do something in a bar and 42below was looking at a new way to enhance its brand, “so we got together.”
“We thought we’d go to the pub because we wanted to reach people who didn’t like going to the theatre,” Driver says. “Hell I don’t want to go to the theatre myself sometimes.”
Did I Believe It? is inspired by the silly madness of Monte Python and plays homage to the educational programmes that British television network ITV began screening in the late 1970s. In Did I Believe It? a handful of oddball characters disseminate the historic facts about vodka and the kiwi battler who conquered the world with his award winning vodka made in his suburban garage.
“Setting the play in the 1970s allowed us to get away with things we wouldn’t have otherwise.” Driver says. “Things that are PC now weren’t so then.”
Trading the traditional theatre space did bring challenges for Driver and writer Jodie Molloy.
“The play had to be more interactive, more responsive. We had to deliver in a less formal way. It had to be less freaky for the audience.”
Non-traditional also describes the method used to write the play. With no script 12 actors got together, bounced the theme of vodka around, and came up with the ideas that were then worked into a script.
“We came up with something that’s hilariously mad set in a decade where men got to wear ridiculously resplendent clothes,” Driver says.
Did I Believe It?, Foxglove Wharf Ballroom, May 3-12.