Alex Fumero, Marco Ramirez and Lucas Leyva know that if you're in your 20s and looking for a hot night out, you're going to head for a movie or a club or a bar.

A theater? Fat chance. They're all playwrights, and sometimes they don't even want to go to a play. Or can't afford to.

Those truths have fed into a little something titled Toners in Time. The show is the first of three one-weekend-only events the guys have created under their Foryoucansee Theater banner. Part play, part concert, part multimedia extravaganza, Toners in Time weds the story of the Toners -- a group dreaming of reggaeton superstardom -- to the time-traveling craziness of movies like Back to the Future.

And get this: A ticket is just $10. Or, if you're feeling lucky, the value of a randomly selected domino ficha -- which could get you in for free or have you pay up to $18. And there are free drinks before the show.

''I moved back to Miami to make work that was by and for Miami,'' says Fumero, who is directing and starring in Toners in Time while also shooting his role in the Telemundo telenovela Más sabe del diablo.

``This is a great way to build an audience. You can't shove theater down their throats. If we really want our generation of Miamians to come out, we have to hold their hands and guide them through it. But once you get adjusted to theater, you get addicted to it.''

Fumero and Ramirez, both 26, met while they were undergrads at New York University. Fumero and Leyva, 22, are two of the brains behind the Borsht Film Festival, which showcases the works of Miami independent filmmakers. The three sons of Cuban-American families are all part of South Florida's burgeoning play-writing scene; Ramirez, who will begin his second year at Juilliard in the fall, is also getting his work produced nationally.

It was Ramirez, in fact, who came up with the first Toners script, inventing Daddy Yankee wannabes Tito and Che-Frio.

''I wrote a screenplay in college,'' he says. ``It was a kind of mocumentary, Spinal Tap rip-off.''

At first, Fumero and Ramirez tried to pitch the Toners as a movie or television project, and they did a YouTube video on the group. Producers, Fumero says, 'wanted us to make it `West Coast accessible,' which to me was code for Mexicanizing it.''

Ramirez had an ah-ha moment while visiting his girlfriend, Miami actress Ceci Fernandez, who is studying in England. There he discovered the British comedy troupe the Mighty Boosh, which began doing episodic stage and radio shows, then moved on to a BBC television series, large-scale tours and festivals. If the Mighty Boosh broke through with episodic theater, the Foryoucansee guys reasoned, why not the Toners?

Ramirez, Leyva and Fumero wrote Toners in Time together.

Leyva explains, ``Marco is the head writer, because the characters are his creations, but we wrote the scripts sitcom-style, sending pages back and forth, and reworking each other's scenes and drafts.''

They used the same process to create Back to Bassics, the second Toners play, and a not-yet-titled third piece. Like Toners in Time, Back to Bassics will play at Coral Gables' 100-seat New Theatre for one weekend near the end of August, but Foryoucansee is still looking for the right venue to do the third show later this year.

''We're looking for an alternative space,'' Fumero says, ``because the play is about a giant.''

Putting all that creativity, not to mention some $4,500 per show, into plays that run just three performances each may sound self-limiting. But Fumero says the company wants to start off small.

''We're doing it this way as a test, to see how the audience responds,'' he says. ``We decided it would be wise to temper our efforts.''

If it works, Foryoucansee will follow up with a still-untitled play by Leyva, a script he describes as ''a mid-apocalyptic darkly comic Cuban-American fantasia with zombies,'' plus an evening of short plays by Ramirez, Leyva and (if his busy schedule permits) hot Miami playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney.

This weekend, it's Toners in Time, preceded by cocktails from two of the show's sponsors, Caldas Rum and Cawy Beverages (the maker of Materva and Jupiña, the Toners' favorite soda, not that these playwrights would engage in product placement or anything).

The booze? Fumero acknowledges that it's one more way of getting the target audience to turn out.

``Miami is what it is. A lot revolves around the party. We don't want to disparage that.''

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