James Yarker is an artistic director working in a field he thinks is far too safe. Lorne Jackson discovers what drives him to push the boundaries of performance.

James Yarker informs me that later in the day he’ll be taking his five-year-old daughter, Eve, to see Yogi Bear.

Nothing out of the ordinary about that, you may think, and usually I’d agree.

A few days ago I took my own five-year-old, Ben, to see the very same movie. That’s the kind of thing you’re forced to do if you want to keep your little scamp hushed-up and out of your hair during the school holidays.

I found the film dull beyond belief, though Ben confidently declared it the best flick ever made (starring a talking brown bear in a hat and tie).

So why shouldn’t Yarker take Eve to see Yogi?

Well, the thing is, Yarker isn’t merely Eve’s daddy. He’s also an avant-garde artist, the co-founder and artistic director of Stan’s Cafe, the Birmingham based theatre company with an international reputation for innovative, boundary blasting work.

Babbling brown bears from Jellystone Park are rarely on his agenda.

Still, there’s always a first time...

“I’ve been to the cinema twice since Eve was born,” he says. “And I’ve seen Man On Wire, The Lives of Others and now Yogi Bear, which certainly isn’t what I’d describe as my usual creative sustenance.

“Still, at least it should be different. I’ve never seen a 3D film before.”

I’d love to be a fly on the wall when Yarker ingests Yogi. I bet a few grimaces will be involved. Maybe even some outraged tossing of popcorn at the screen.

Yarker is hard-core when it comes to art. His challenging oeuvre includes It’s Your Film, a mixed-media show structured to look like a movie. It was performed live for an audience of one, 60 times per day

In person, he’s lean and distinctive, with severely cropped hair that makes him look rather Brechtian. Or maybe he’s Winston Smith, minutes after staggering out of Room 101. His opinions on performance are just as uncompromising as his barber’s clippers.

For Yarker, there is nothing streamish about the mainstream. It doesn’t provide a steady flow of freshness – just a rancid reservoir of stale ideas.

“When it comes to theatre and film I really object to being told how to think,” he says. “Y’know: ‘This is how you should feel, and this is how you should respond.’

“There’s this patronising over-explaining of things which I find wearisome, really.

“I have a particular aversion to theatre shows where they’ll do a physicalisation of the things they were telling you in the text as well.

“I’m always thinking, ‘Why are you telling me the same thing twice?’ It really slows things down.”

I’m talking to Yarker in the AE Harris building, the home of Stan’s Cafe (pronounced Caf), a cavernous former warehouse in the Jewellery Quarter.

Free of fakery and frills, it suits the company well, though Yarker admits the upkeep is a strain on already tight resources.

He hunches in one corner of the sprawling site’s office, hunkered close to a basic sort of brazier that struggles valiantly to heat the drafty space.

At the other end of the room sits Eve, a bubbly little thing in silver baseball boots, patiently waiting for daddy to finish discussing theatre with the funny fellow from the Birmingham Post.

Then maybe they can vamoose to the multiplex...