Young theatre artists can wax rhapsodic over Daniel MacIvor and George F. Walker all they want. But 21-year-old creator Jordan Tannahill has his own influences — namely the Canadian documentaries of Claude Jutra.

“A few weeks ago I skipped out of class as usual,” says Tannahill, who is finishing up his film production degree at Ryerson, “and I went down to the NFB Mediatheque and watched the Claude Jutra film Wow, made in 1969. He basically interviewed nine teenagers in Montreal that year and asked them a simple question — “What is your most fantastic dream?” So the whole film is these young kids in the Montreal suburbs blowing up houses. And I was like “Oh my god, Claude Jutra is doing exactly what I’m doing with my piece, 40 years ago. And it’s so beautiful!”

The artistic director of his own theatre company, Suburban Beast, Tannahill goes where few theatre artists dare to tread. Last year saw the production of two parts of Tannahill’s Fratrilogy in which he and collaborator Nathan Schwartz conducted interviews with real-life fraternity brothers and invited five to perform confessional monologues as part of both Harbourfront’s HATCH and Nuit Blanche. A blanket fort at Rolly’s Garage was the bring-your-own-venue for the well-regarded The Art of Catching Pigeons By Torchlight at SummerWorks, in which Tannahill curated stories from the city’s night workers, including prostitutes, bikers and Tim Horton’s employees. His next and most ambitious project will involve travelling in the passenger’s seat beside real-life truckers as they recount life on the road. (The audience is invited to see impromptu performances at roadside truck stops.) Tannahill has collaborated with lesbian army deserters, ex-cons and Walmart greeters. But he’s never worked with children — until now.

At the Rhubarb Festival this week, Tannahill stages Insurgency, a hybrid film and theatre piece in which five 10- to 13-year-olds, found with help from public school solicitations and Darren O’Donnell, confess “what they would die for” as a projected fantasy of their rebellion plays behind them. A haunting score, which is part John Philip Sousa, part Kate Bush, has been created by  Blocks Recording Club’s classically trained breakout musician Katie Stelmanis, creating a vivid portrait of the iGen’s dreams and desires.

“We get people to play themselves onstage because they’re the most qualified,” explains Tannahill of his Soviet typage belief in casting. “You can’t create performances better than what these actual five kids are giving us, because it’s just them. Certainly in this piece I was really interested in how Generation Y is pre-emptively defined as the generation of apathy and narcissism, how they’re post religion, post cause, post politics. All the kids’ answers were incredibly passionate and yet also very personal. Their cause is themselves, and their family and friends. They would die for who they love.”

A video timed to the 30-minute performance features the children invoking a rebel insurgency in the streets of Toronto. There is a hallucinogenic quality to the footage, as the kids make a tent city on the side of the Gardiner Expressway, lighting flares by abandoned factories and running with AK-47s down the shores of Cherry Beach, juxtaposed with stories of their own personal battles at home. Though this is only one aspect of Tannahill’s typically omnivorous approach to storytelling, he feels that the cross-section of perspectives — a Mormon, an Orthodox Jew and a resident of Regent Park are among the actors — are part of his work’s continuing exploration of gender and identity. But for an interviewer who has to appeal to everyone, how much of an actor is Tannahill?

“Doing an interview is such an art form,” he says. “But I would never be dishonest with myself. Doing the frat project [Fratrilogy], it was very important to me that I was openly acknowledging that I was a gay man if I was expecting them to be honest with me. So I would never out-and-out lie to an interview subject [about who I am], but you definitely find yourself smoking what they’re smoking, drinking what they’re drinking….” Or in the case of minors, getting to know their parents.

“There’s this funny thing about working with underage actors, you have to deal with their parents. The show right after ours at Buddies is Les Petit Mort, based on this short story by George Bataille. There’s live scat onstage, vagina play, lots of boobs. So we have to usher these kids out. It’s like, ‘Okay kids — great job on the show. Now run, run, run! Get out quick!’”