Parents just don’t understand, yet they have all the power. But kids turn the tables in That Night Follows Day, a performance piece by English avant-gardist Tim Etchells based on interviews he did with Belgian schoolchildren—who then enacted their parental complaints and denunciations. Vancouver, BC’s Theatre Replacement is bringing the show—and its 17 performers, ages 8 to 14—to Seattle via train, as artistic directors James Long and Maiko Bae Yamamoto recently explained by phone. Of their scripted list of grievances, says Long of his young cast, “It didn’t take a lot of explaining, because these kids have a real understanding of what these words are about—they’re speaking to their mom, they’re speaking to their grandmother, they’re speaking to their teachers.” Etchells, a parent himself, inverts the usual discourse of authority, in which elders talk down to youth. Now we’re forced to sit and listen to them. Yamamoto says their performers “totally bought into the concept of the play, the overall idea of the play, which is that [power is] flipped.” So did Vancouver moms and dads absorb any new parenting lessons from seeing their kids’ critique on stage? “Not that they’d admit to,” Long says with a laugh, adding that kids now quote lines from That Night to their parents. “And they do it to us, too.” BRIAN MILLER

Fri., March 20, 8 p.m.; Sat., March 21, 2 & 8 p.m., 2009