A man and a woman sit across a table from one anoth­er at a Welling­ton cafe. He’s mak­ing some­thing from a ball of Blu-tack, she’s draw­ing some­thing with chalk.

The lat­est pro­duc­tion from Down­stage, Eti­quette, does things a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly. Gone is the famil­iar loca­tion of the Han­nah Play­house. Instead the action takes place at a table at the Mat­ter­horn. Also gone are the actors, with the audi­ence becom­ing the per­form­ers. (OMG, I know.)

The two audi­ence members/performers are seat­ed at a reg­u­lar Mat­ter­horn table, which is set with a num­ber of curi­ous props, includ­ing a glass of water, tiny fig­urines and that ball of Blu-tack. These two par­tic­i­pants each have an iPod, which pro­vides them with their spe­cif­ic instruc­tions for the pro­duc­tion.

Lines are fed, stage direc­tions are giv­en. Some­times the action takes place lit­er­al­ly between the two par­tic­i­pants, oth­er times it’s with­in the audio, com­plete with a sam­pling of Ibsen’s A Dol­l’s House.

This 30-minute pro­duc­tion is a lot of fun. Sit­ting at the table, fol­low­ing instruc­tions, wait­ing to see what your table­mate is going to say or do to you is a big part of the expe­ri­ence.

There are two Eti­quette tables set up at Mat­ter­horn, both off in a side alcove, so you (hope­ful­ly) won’t be dis­turbed by noisy and/or munt­ed din­ers. The two tables also run 15 min­utes apart from each oth­er, so you won’t end up run­ning simul­tae­nous­ly with the oth­er table.

Eti­quette was cre­at­ed by UK the­atre com­pa­ny Rotoza­za, and is part of their “Autoteatro” con­cept of “self-gen­er­at­ing per­for­mance”. It left me want­i­ng to run through it again, and again in the man’s role, or even expe­ri­ence anoth­er sto­ry in this for­mat.

And here’s a tip: Eti­quette make for an excel­lent date activ­i­ty. While it’s just fine for seri­ous cou­ples, friends or fam­i­ly, the close­ness, inter­ac­tiv­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to take on anoth­er char­ac­ter and say out­ra­geous things would be a bril­liant thing to do with some­one you fan­cy. Aw yeah.

  • Eti­quette runs dai­ly until 20 Feb­ru­ary at Mat­ter­horn on Cuba Mall.

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For an idea of what to expect, here’s a lit­tle trail­er for an ear­li­er Glas­gow pro­duc­tion. It does­n’t give too much away — in fact, it even looks a lit­tle dif­fer­ent to the Welling­ton pro­duc­tion.