Children like to play. They animate lifeless objects, often with grotesque gestures. When they get bruised by bumping into a table, the table is to blame: it's a ‘bad table’. A childish environment seems to be filled with demons, both good and bad. It was Jean Piaget, the cognitive psychologist, who in 1929 considered ‘animism’ a typical feature of the development of children (Looft & Bartz 1969: 1). Already in 1906, Ernst Jentsch had made a similar observation in his essay ‘On the Psychology of the Uncanny’.

The most ‘uncanny’ theatre spectacles in Flanders by far are made by Abattoir Fermé, a theatre company founded in 1991 in Mechelen, with a core group consisting of director Stef Lernous and actors Tine Van den Wyngaert, Nick Kaldunski, Kirsten Pieters, Chiel Van Berkel and Pepijn Coudron. Since the performance Bloetverlies (‘Blood loss’) in 2003, they have obtained a firm position in the Flemish theatre landscape and abroad: in 2006, Romeo Castellucci invited them to Cesena, and they also performed at the 2010 Avignon Festival.

To be certain, their performances are not in the least childish but rather illustrations of a frightening and despicable world of violence and sex. Inspired by media such as exploitation movies, comic books and fairytales, Abattoir Fermé displays detached characters in a ritualistic atmosphere with animistic roots. Breaking down one taboo after another, they present subversive spectacle that is as amusing as it is touching.

In this chapter I will interpret Abattoir Fermé's spectacle as an answer to the contemporary urge for transgression or ‘liminal experience’ that is closely connected with concepts like the uncanny, the grotesque, the carnivalesque and the marvellous. Even in a modern rational world, people look for thrills that confront them with the limits of life and take them into an illusionary world. Abattoir Fermé illustrates and answers both the urge and the thrills with transgressive content and forms.