The Argus: Brighton Festival Thumb When co-director of French street theatre company Générik Vapeur Caty Avram talks about the creative concepts behind two works the Marseilles-based troupe is bringing to Brighton Festival, she loses both of us.

The interview becomes a bit like a Chuckle Brothers show. The phone is passed between staff and bystanders, anyone who claims to know the English for the word “barrel”.

It’s great fun, but the scene is best shared because it’s one straightforward metaphor for the group’s work: the ideas are visual, not literal.

Because Avram’s quirky English is far better than my rusty French, we get to the heart of what the band of musicians, actors, artists and technicians are trying to do.

“It’s many things you can only understand by having a look,” she says.

“It’s pictures, not narrative. We don’t speak French. We can act this in any country in the world because the language is an imaginary one. It’s all in the imagination.”

The first show to cast your thoughts upon is Drôles d’Oiseaux. It begins with seven white cars, flanked by actors. They are like the white pages of a book yet to be written.

As the parade weaves through town, with live music and singing, the colours of the rainbow – “the poetic colours of life” – arrive: boiler-suited actors attack each car with a flurry of paint.

“All the colours are really important in life,” says Avram, “Because we need them all to make something good with life.”

Later the cars are to be hung from a washing line to dry on giant wooden clothes pegs. The point is to show quotidian life can be art if you want it to be; that every action of the everyday contributes to something universal.

“But you have to see, not say,” she adds.

The company will make an installation at The Level then leave. The cars will hang until Monday.

She says they see the city as a theatre, and people should go to see the installation because it will reveal a new way of looking at their environment.

It’s essential the shows are free because culture should be made available to all.

“It’s not important if you are rich or poor, or if you have work or not. If people want to come, they can. Our show will make people meet together.”

Tomorrow blue-faced actors, searching for freedom, looking for life, will roll big industrial barrels as Générik Vapeur performs one of its oldest shows.

They call Bivouac the rocking shop because they work with metal in an industrial way. The barrels reflect the ones used by industry, usually filled with chemical products.

“You can put fruit juice in the cans, good for everyone, or you can put chemicals in,” says Avram.

“It’s terrible for international relations that so many countries try to dump chemicals in poor countries.”

The show was designed so it could be done anywhere – big capital or small provincial village – and as a homage to life.

A truck with electric music follows the performers, who do inventive acrobatics on the barrels to use them as transport.

There are no barriers and the crowd is part of the performance.

“We are blue because we want to say as artists that there is one colour of humans. Wherever you are in the world we are all human. It’s stupid to make limits.”

Bivouac was conceived in 1989. Its inspiration was the Berlin Wall, just as the divide between the West and the East was falling.

“We wanted all the walls to fall: the concrete walls and the ideological, international ones too.”

It’s also about the beginning of the industrial revolution, which changed everything for people and how they work.

“So,” she adds, finding clarity, “it’s really about art and the phenomenon of society.”

* Drôles d’Oiseaux: Gathering at Victoria Gardens, Brighton at 7.30pm for 7.45pm start. Parade will move through town centre up Old Steine/Lewes Road to The Level, free * Bivouac: Gathering outside the Crew Club, Coolham Drive, Whitehawk at 8pm for 8.30pm start. Parade will come down Whitehawk Way before finishing at East Brighton Park, free