Two friends, Claire and Carina, are discussing success in the theatre. We're sitting at the dinner table. Claire's compact home, a combination of stage props and antiques, is ablaze with the evening sun setting over Amsterdam. These days Carina is busy with endless piles of forms, applications and procedures hopefully enabling a new production, while Claire finds it ever harder to work off the beaten paths. By categorically staying in the fringes of theatre and deploying informal networks, she has withdrawn from the world of people with VAT numbers.

All three of us have seen the film ‘Das Leben der Anderen’, about an actress betraying her beloved to secure her own career. Claire and Carina remember how years ago life in and around the theatre seemed to them more true than the outside world, as if whatever happened on stage mattered more than everything else. Life there seemed indispensable as opposed to life in the shade.

Meanwhile, in the back of the house, their two daughters have prepared a sketch and now they step into the sunlight, carrying musical instruments to hide their faces. They use tiny walkie talkies to communicate in a lingo taken from the virtual world of ‘The Sims’ -- grumbling and oriental crowing, mood rather than message.

One of them hides in the shadows while the other coos her gutteral message to the world.

Then she listens, waiting for an answer.