This is Muur, an open-air performance piece by the young Flemish director Inne Goris, which premieres as part of the kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels.

Goris is remarkably versatile, for the last decade devising excitingly innovative work with children, amateurs, dancers and actors. She has been likened to a sculptor in the way she creates strong visual and atmospheric imagery. She prefers to adapt her staging for each new production, establishing unique relationships with her audiences.

“I’m always intrigued by what happens to people when you put them in a special situation,” she says. This pertains to her audiences as well as her characters, and she is present at every performance hoping that people will approach her to discuss the work.

Myths and fairytales are a source of inspiration, and Goris is searching for “what has been left unsaid, the crack in the fabric that allows for a personal connection”. Speaking of her previous work Zeven, she says: “When I was researching Snow White, it struck me that she must be terribly lonely. Otherwise, why would a young woman go off with seven strange men in a wood? This isolation is something with which we can easily identify.” Trusting in intuition, she turns to the work of female artists when she is “stuck”. French artist Louise Bourgeois is one of her most cherished sources.

Goris tackles conflict unflinchingly. Having explored the story of Judas and directed two variations on the Medea myth, one of them with children, her work often has been dubbed “dark” and at the same time magical. She investigates aspects of human behaviour that confound explanation and yet trusts that we can always find the strength to evade patterns of negative behaviour. In dealing with violence, she explores “that very fine boundary between victim and perpetrator, often in family contexts. I’ll never be able to understand how Medea could murder her children, but I can ask the question ‘what does she want from this man?’ And I can look at how this type of conflict is passed on to future generations.”

Muur deals with our need to organise chaos by making up stories, to understand our past by creating mythologies and to invest our future with hope through utopian visions. “The wall,” she explains, “has no story of its own to tell. It’s a sounding- board for a multitude of stories brought to it by pilgrims from across the globe, with their own needs and desires. It is a receptacle.”

The audience witnesses the action as visitors to the wall – free to walk around it and touch it, listen in on conversations, make up our own stories. “I work associatively,” Goris says. “The work stimulates the imagination through personal associations. The most beautiful thing that could happen would be if the audience were to stay behind and talk about their own visions.”

13-16, 18-19 May
Tour & Taxis site
Entry 16, Havenlaan 86c
Brussels
www.kfda.be