Tom Cardy.

The first play in the new Bats Theatre not only takes full advantage of more space, but has been written by young playwright powerhouse Uther Dean. He talks to

PROLIFIC Wellington playwright Uther Dean has every reason to be excited about his new play being staged in the rebuilt Bats Theatre.

But it’s not only because Watch will be the first production since the Kent Tce theatre has undergone an extensive refit and restoration since being bought by Sir Peter Jackson and his filmmaker partner Fran Walsh.

The design of the play, as well as how it will be performed, fully takes advantage of the new Bats having not one, but three performance spaces.

‘‘They are literally building a house,’’ says Dean explaining the Watch set, which comprises a two-storey house using two floors of the theatre. The audience start the play seated in the main 85-seat space called The Stage.

‘‘It absolutely could not have been done, either at Bats [temporary home on Dixon St] or Bats in its former state.’’

Watch is about surveillance. It focuses on two ‘‘scanners’’ – a veteran played by Jason Whyte and a new field agent played by Hannah Banks – who work for an unnamed government agency. They have been tasked with monitoring the activities of a couple, played by Miranda Manasiadis and Paul Waggott, who live downstairs in the same house.

The play utilises 16 screens, six projectors and 20 cameras transmitting a live feed of what the couple are doing.

The couple think that Whyte and Banks’ characters are simply their upstairs neighbours. ‘‘It’s about how intimate it can be. But we [the audience] can see into their upstairs flat and they’re not neighbours. They are just staring at a bank of screens, detailing every aspect of [the couple’s] life,’’ says Dean.

After the first act the audience are also asked to relocate to The Dome, a new, second performance space in Bats, as the play unfolds. ‘‘The whole game of the show changes. You go to a different theatre in the same building.’’

Watch is Bats’ annual STAB production. It’s one of the few times each year the theatre commissions a play. The emphasis on a STAB show is that it push the boundaries of how a play can be performed – and this can often involve new technology, lighting or sound.

Watch, staged by Wellington theatre company My Accomplice, founded by Dean, Banks and Waggott in 2009, does utilise hi-tech audio visual. But Dean says the inclusion of technology wasn’t just to fit the STAB philosophy. ‘‘We wanted to produce a work where the AV, the tech, the ‘STAB’ of it is totally indivisible from the narrative,’’ says Dean.

He jokes that this also means ‘‘we have a lot of plan Bs if cameras break’’.

As a result, Dean is also codirecting Watch with its designer Meg Rollandi.

Dean says the idea for Watch came more than a year ago, in the fallout of revelations by Edward Snowden about surveillance, along with Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. ‘‘I was thinking about how to make a work about that.’’

At the time My Accomplice had just had a successful run with Joseph K, loosely based on Franz Kafka’s classic The

‘I love the bravery of people who work on a show for two years, like it’s a crystal glass or a faberge egg of theatre, and then they can show it to the world. I think that’s cool, but I’m just not particularly interested in making that way.’

Wellington playwright Uther Dean Trial, which had similar themes.

‘‘It would also be nice to do a STAB show, so those ideas started to percolate. When I heard that this year’s STAB commission would be launching the new building that kind of crystallised something.’’

DEAN, Banks and Waggott founded My Accomplice while studying theatre at Victoria University. But Dean’s involvement in theatre and performance goes back many years. In 2001, when he was 13, and in his first year at Wellington High School, he was one of the youngest writers and performers in the annual Fringe Festival. That year he staged 55-minute comedy show The Audience Will Die. He roped in his dad Steve to play his ‘‘straight man’’.

‘‘It wasn’t a good show,’’ he says. But he got a lot of encouragement from Wellington High School drama teachers and continued to pursue theatre and performance. ‘‘It was the best high

Death and the Dreamlife of Elephants, directed by Leo Gene Peters.

‘‘I look back on it now as the greatest opportunity ever,’’ says Dean.

My Accomplice have staged shows every year since 2010 – Dean estimates they’ve had 15 seasons. The company’s shows have been nominated for five Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards, won two Fringe Festival awards and one at the Dunedin fringe. The company also created podcast audiodrama series The Witching Hours and is developing a drama series with Radio New Zealand.

‘‘I love the bravery of people who work on a show for two years, like it’s a crystal glass or a faberge egg of theatre, and then they can show it to the world. I think that’s cool, but I’m just not particularly interested in making that way,’’ says Dean. ‘‘I feel like there are so many stories out there to be told and that’s what we wanted to do.’’

Watch is Dean’s and his theatre company’s most ambitious work. ‘‘This is our first show with a budget above, at most, five figures. Our STAB proposal document ended with the phrase ‘you see what we can do for nothing, now imagine what we can do for something’.’’ Watch, Bats Theatre, Saturday until December 13, 7.30pm.