the kid; As the extraordinary clown and acrobat James Thierree returns to New York, Adam Green catches up with him- and his equally talented sister Aurelia.

Byline: Adam Green

James Thierree wasn't actually born in a trunk, but he grew up in a circus, and he made his stage debut inside a piece of luggage. In the 1970s, his parents, Jean-Baptiste Thierree and Victoria Thierree Chaplin, created the spare and surreal Cirque Imaginaire. They brought their son and his sister Aurelia, ages four and three, into the act as a pair of suitcases that magically sprouted legs and scooted around the stage before getting hauled off by the handles. "We were used as props," Thierree recalls. "We were small, cute, and easy to carry."

Now 33, Thierree is somewhat less compact, though just as nimble. And he still likes playing with inanimate objects and astonishing audiences with flights of fancy-along with impressive athleticism, knockabout clowning, and charm to spare. Since 2000, Thierree has led his own troupe of performers, Compagnie du Hanneton, writing, directing, and starring in shows that resist classification-a hallucinatory mix of dance, theater, and circus. "I just use whatever is at hand to express the characters' desires and drives," he says. "The freedom that I got from working with my parents is that everything is allowed."

Thierree first brought his troupe to New York in 2002, with The Junebug Symphony, a Dadaist vaudeville about one man's journey through a sleepless night, in which he performed a tightrope pas de deux with a beautiful contortionist, swung from a trapeze, and lost his head in a duel. In 2005, he made a splash at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the poetically rough-and-tumble Bright Abyss, a balancing act between breathtaking spectacle and intimate virtuosity.

This month, Thierree and Co. return to BAM with Au Revoir Parapluie ("Farewell Umbrella"), a loose-very loose-interpretation of the Orpheus myth. "I like the idea of a guy who has to overcome insane obstacles to get his love back-it's so simple," he says. With a cast of five and a set filled with swirling ropes, waves of black velvet, and a malevolent rocking chair, the show features Thierree's signature eclecticism and his instinct for capturing what he calls "the uncontrollable present moment."

Thierree is such an inventive performer and director that it almost seems churlish to mention that his grandfather was, well, arguably the greatest comic genius of the twentieth century, Charlie Chaplin. (Thierree's mother is one of Chaplin's eight children with Oona O'Neill.) Thierree was three when Chaplin died, so he has no memory of him, and though he has sometimes bristled at being compared to his legendary ...