Odd? But True!, a performance for children by Grace Ellen Barkey and Lot Lemm, had not been on long before a small boy in front of me commented with some disappointment that 'there is no story'. His parents replied placatingly that this was because it was 'dance'. This appeared to be a sufficient remedy, because for the rest of the performance the child watched what was going on with great interest. This may tell us something about what we understand by the term 'dance': stage practices where there is no story involved. But although a few scenes are unmistakably pure dance, the parents' explanation does not really work. They chose the wrong word. This is theatre. Pretending. But in a fairly shameless way. Until it becomes just like the real thing. While almost the whole of Needcompany ensemble was on tour in China, the ones who stayed at home – Grace Ellen Barkey and Lot Lemm – thought up this piece for children. But what exactly is so childlike about it, or why do Lemm&Barkey think this material is suitable for children? After all, if you have kept track of their development, in the first place you see something else: a quick montage of images from previous productions which the actors cheerfully set to work with. The stage set, for example. The stage is full of suspended plastic panels covered in busy, colourful decorative motifs like those on mattresses or the curtains in an old-fashioned interior. It was precisely the same image that dominated Chunking, a piece from 2005. (You see more elements from Chunking later, when mythological creatures sawn out of plywood float above the stage.) In this new production these panels again become living set elements. From the very beginning they lead a life of their own, or so it seems: they slide across the podium under their own steam. But it doesn’t take long before an actor sticks his head out from behind one or other panel – an acted showpiece – to give the explanation of this mystery of animated matter. These panels are not the only thing that comes to life. The play begins with the sound of howling wind, or at least a successful imitation of it. The first character is a small boat in cardboard. It slides past in a string. No trouble is taken to hide the string. On the contrary, a lot of effort is put into showing it. Then you hear the mumbling of a man, Benoît Gob, who soon makes his appearance, wearing a captain’s uniform and babbling in an odd mixture of French and Dutch. In his wake follows Sung-Im Her as the duty cabin boy. You know this because of her sailor’s cap and jumper, though she is also wearing a peculiar pair of knickerbockers, like oversized underwear. These two have to brave not only the elements, but also dangerous animals such as a fish and huge shark, both in cardboard. Sung-Im Her is scared to death when she sees the shark and always runs off screaming. Though I have rarely seen a woman so much enjoy being frightened. Which is no surprise: every so often Maarten Seghers, bewigged and grinning, pops up from behind a panel to show the audience with a great big wink that it is he who is operating the fish and that the danger is thus only imaginary. If there is one mechanism which in my memory I associate with children's theatre, it is this: someone who assures you that it’s not all as bad as it looks. That it’s 'only' theatre. This is what we do with children, after all. If something strange turns up, we ward off the danger by 'explaining it'. This is usually a matter of giving it a name. 'Don't worry, it’s only a dog.' This doesn't make the animal any different or less dangerous. But we seem to have it under control precisely because there is a word for it. Exactly as the parents at the beginning said when their son raised a problem: 'It’s dance'. And this is probably necessary for a children's performance. Unlike adults, children naturally accept an image as true. What is happening is real. It is too much to credit that adults invent places where things can be done that they do not themselves believe in. Rightly so, for that matter, from their point of view: they see that these same adults are moved by or get excited about things which they themselves say are 'not real'. But Barkey goes to extremes in her demonstration that what we see is only acting, an artifice. In a superb scene taken from The Porcelain Project, Mohamed Toukabri and Sung-Im Her come on in a gigantic crinoline dress, a sort of oversized lampshade. They suddenly rise up in the air like unnaturally big giants, without your being able to see how. Until Toukabri wants to come down again. The man who is carrying him – it's that nuisance Seghers again, of course – doesn’t obey. Not even when Toukabri uncovers his head and gives it a serious blow. In this way the hidden (though not very hidden) deceiver becomes one of the main characters of the play, in a metaphorical sense too. He reassures the viewer, but this reassurance is not very reliable, because when it comes down to it he turns out to do his own thing, and his thing is rather unpredictable. Take the scene lifted from This door is too small (for a bear) that is repeated here. Gob comes on as a teddy bear who wants to do the washing. But Seghers has hidden in the washing machine (made of slabs of PU foam) and keeps on throwing the clothes back out again. Sung-Im Her and Catherine Travelletti bait the bear by pulling its ironing board away on a string. In this case the deception is not used to create an illusion. Children too see this as something different from a shark that is really 'only' made of cardboard. The washing machine and ironing board are clearly not 'alive'. It is the actors who control them, with the clear aim of pestering the bear. This brings us to the end of the play. Just as in Chunking and This door …, all the players now appear in brightly coloured, crocheted costumes, very clearly inspired by cuddly toys. The sort of object that domesticates a dangerous outside world into a cosy interior that is identified as appealing. You would probably never dream of cuddling a real bear, only a toy bear. Barkey undoubtedly drew her inspiration for these costumes from Mike Kelley’s cuddly toys. They tell the story of a false childlike innocence, a world where the signs we hang on things turn out never to perfectly describe the thing itself. Take Travelletti's costume, for instance: it may portray a gentle creature, but her bare legs emphasise the broad piece of cloth like a nappy that covers her pubic region, so emphatically that it's almost obscene. Though the occasionally explicit sexual references that otherwise crop up in Barkey's work do not appear in this play for children (but then again...), the odd innocence of the crocheted animals nevertheless suggests a sort of amorphous sexuality. Which is why this is theatre. It is constantly saying 'this is not real'. Or, rather, 'this is too real', because we know exactly how it's all put together. Everything has a name and a place. But unlike serious theatre, it all goes haywire. Sometimes it gets serious, sometimes mean, and sometimes just stops short of being explicit. This is of course why the parents enjoy the play too. They see confirmation of what they already thought: we show each other all sorts of signs; we serve up stories to each other. Sweet cakes with a bitter aftertaste. But I also think that children pick up something too. They learn something from it. But parents, like their children, also learn something else. In Lemm&Barkey's theatre anything is possible. It may be uncomfortable, but it is also a refuge. Cheating, giving the wrong names to the wrong things, all this also liberates you from 'received ideas'. In fact this is not so different from what the duo otherwise does elsewhere. And that too is theatre. Or was it dance? Oh, let's just forget the names.