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When reading scripts, Jeffrey Carpenter has a two-page rule.

"I hate reading. It takes me forever," says Carpenter, the artistic director of Bricolage Production Company. "If you get me on the first two pages, I might stick around."

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's "Hunter Gatherers" held him all the way to the end. Carpenter is directing the production that begins Thursday at Bricolage Production Company's performance space, Downtown.

The cast includes Michael Fuller, Tressa Glover, Amy Landis, and Jonathan Visser.

It's a darkly comic play about a two couples who get together for an evening. But it's far from your average comedy about a dinner party.

It begins with an animal sacrifice, then descends into wrestling, dancing, sex, violence and deception and offers no guarantees that everyone will survive long enough to enjoy dessert.

"There are no end to the surprises and the fun. It starts at an 8 and climbs from there," Carpenter says. "Peter (Sinn Nachtrieb) is (terrific) at being able to be the audience. He knows what you are thinking and is two steps ahead."

Carpenter has no interest in producing or directing the safe and familiar. Whether it's a classic such as Shakespeare's "Troillus and Cressida," a brand new work such as "Key to the Field" or an episode of the company's continuing "Midnight Radio" series, Carpenter is always on the lookout for works that are alive.

"If I am going to live with something for six months, I've got to be discovering new things all the time," he says.

He's also not interested in staging something that you would see in the movies or on TV.

"It has to be theatrical. It's got to have heightened reality," he says, "It has to be something that hits me on a visceral level and it's got to connect with a current sensibility, even if it's a classic. How does it resonate with what is going on in our world?"

He expects "Hunter Gatherers" will resonate with Gen Xers such as himself.

"It really captures my generation's sense of lack of purpose," he says. "We have infinite choices. We go down the toothpaste aisle and there are infinite choices. But none of them are life or death choices."

Finally, Carpenter says, it has to be amusing: "Everything we do has a sense of humor about it. There's a dark comic laugh at the bottom of it."