The Ghent-based theatre company Ontroerend Goed has done what practically no other company ever has: made theatre with teenagers for adults. By mostly just telling you about themselves, the young actors have an uncanny knack of telling you about yourself.

The latest show is Teenage Riot, which is just back from the Edinburgh Festival before its Belgian premiere in Ghent later this month. Edinburgh is a big fan of the work of Ontroerend Goed, and its critics lauded Teenage Riot (pictured) as "the strongest" in a spate of plays about young people.

"They cheated because they were real teenagers, where the other shows were with slightly older actors playing teenagers," said one commentator on BBC2. "The show was very good at expressing what teenagers want to say to parents."

Although he never gets tired of hearing it, you don't need to explain this to Alexander Devriendt. "Not a lot of people make plays about teenagers and certainly not with teenagers for an adult audience," he tells me at over tea at a cafe in Ghent. "If they do, it's some kind of social service project, and, artistically, those never reach the same heights."

Devriendt, 33, founded Ontroerend Goed, together with several collaborators, when he was still studying Germanic languages at the University of Ghent. "We didn't know anything about theatre," he admits. "We just made stuff up."

In the decade since, that stuff they make up has won several awards at the Edinburgh Festival and in Australia, wowed critics in New York and taken them across Europe and into Morocco and Singapore, where audiences line up to be part of their wholly unique brand of interactive theatre. They're popular in Belgium, too - when they're here. At any given moment, several of their shows are on the road.

Right now they are touring a trilogy of pieces written in English, often performing the entire trilogy in one city. In The Smile Off Your Face, you are put into a wheelchair, blindfolded and wheeled through a number of experi- ences. Challenging expectations is part of the show: at one point when a woman speaks to you in a very soft, sexy voice, you are taken aback when you eventually see that she is dressed like Saint Nicolas.

At another point, you lie down with someone on a bed and have a conver- sation with her. Later, a photo is taken of you, and, in the end, you are confronted with your own photo along with photographs of every other person who has been to the show.

When this debuted in Flanders in 2003, "people here didn't really know what to do with us," says Devriendt. In 2007, they took it to Edinburgh, where they were scheduled in "a cellar of a cellar." By the third day, word had spread, and the performance - a sort of assembly line with one new person beginning every five minutes - was sold out.

It won the festival's Total Theatre Award for Experimentation and the Fringe First award. It later won the Fringe First award at the Adelaide Theatre Festival in Australia. "It is a discovery of what is possi- ble beyond the norm," says Devriendt.

Edinburgh, then, was happy to host Internal two years later. And they weren't sorry. Five audience partici- pants are paired with five actors. Then the couples have a 30-minute conversation alone, sort of like a blind date. "The purpose of the show is to see how fast you can build a meaningful relationship with a stranger," explains Devriendt.

Apparently very fast: on their very first performance, the woman Devriendt paired with announced she was in love with him. In other performances, couples kissed each other, and one woman broke up with her boyfriend afterwards. "There are some urban legends about this show," says Devriendt, "and some of them are true." At Edinburgh, "the attention was huge. The ethics of that show were at the centre of every discussion."

The final in the trilogy has run in Hasselt and Ghent this year and is off to the Ulster Bank Theatre Festival in Dublin next month. A Game of You seeks to show partic- ipants the difference between how others see them and how they see themselves. "Some people come out of this show really happy, and some with a really dark look on their faces," says Devriendt.

A distinct lack of boundaries

Ontroerend Goed began performing in 2001, though they hesitated to even call it performing. They put on their show Poorror (a mixture of horror, porn and poetry) at the local bar Hotsy Totsy. "But we never thought about the form; we were just doing a live, interactive thing." They followed it up with a part II and III, which is where they began really experimenting with their relationship with the audience.

Soon enough, the Flemish theatre sector took notice, and they won an award at Ostend's Theater aan zee festi- val. "We still didn't have a clue what we were doing," says Devriendt. "I was the only one present at the awards ceremony because we didn't have any idea that we were going to win."

None of the group had studied theatre, and Devriendt credits that with their success. "We just did what we felt was right," he says, "which gave us an advantage - not knowing the boundaries and rules. I still cherish that deeply, that I don't know what the rules are. We are still doing that."

It was that refusal to follow any established patterns that led to Once and for All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen, their first production with teenage actors. Devriendt, who directs all Ontroerend's productions, wanted to do a show with young people, but when he had a rehearsal he couldn't get them to settle down. So he stopped trying and started watching - letting them goof around and tip over their chairs and just be. And that's largely what you get from the show.

In Once and for All, they act like teenagers - from the funny shenanigans to the snogging and the random cruelty. Occasionally, dialogue is directed outward. "I will be home late, whatever hour you give me," says one girl. "And I will be piss drunk, and I will not be ashamed of myself. I have no choice. I have to go too far. The moment that some of you are thinking... Does she really have to do what she is doing? Yes, I do. It's not because you‘ve been there and done that that I shouldn't go there and do that. Because everything has been done before; but not by me."

In 2008, the production won not only Edinburgh's Total Theatre Award for Experiment and Innovation and its Fringe First Award, but also the prestigious Herald Angels Award.

Devriendt, of course, was ecstatic, but the reactions to the show suggested that the message wasn't complete. "Some people were looking at it like ‘oh, so cute, that teenage rebelliousness.' I wanted to show the other side of the coin."

So they made Teenage Riot. Several youth, aged from 14 to 17, are hidden within a huge box onstage, and they film themselves. You see what they let you see on the front side of the box, which acts as a screen. Inside they do what parents fear the most: have sex, put plastic bags over their heads, get beaten up. Boys cut themselves, while girls writhe about like they're in a music video.

The box separates the audience and the teens, emphasising physical and, hence, emotional distance. "I always say that Once and for All is the teenage experience I wish I'd had, and Teenage Riot is closer to the one I really had," says Devriendt.

One of the performance's most affecting scenes is a close-up of a boy's face, completely emotionless as the others hurl a barrage of familiar phrases: "We're getting divorced, but nothing is going to change, we promise." "You'll have to wait for a new skateboard; we don't have the money." "You don't have to act so sad; I can't stand that." "It's not that your dad hits me that he doesn't love me." "Grandma is dead."

Teenagers don't just have their own lives to deal with; they are subjected to ours. At the end of the scene, I felt exactly like a critic on BBC2, who admitted: "I was torn to shreds."

Ont-what?

Around the world, festivals have trouble pronouncing the name Ontroerend Goed, let alone understanding what it means. In fact, it's a play on words: in Dutch ontroerend means to be moved by something emotionally, while onroerend goed mean "real estate". They tell English speakers that it roughly translates to "feel estate".

Teenage Riot
> 30 September - 3 October
> Kopergietery Blekerijstraat 50, Ghent
> www.ontroerendgoed.be