When I say the word "body," I first think of my own. But when I call other bodies to my mind, uninvited images of "perfect" bodies from magazine covers, advertisements, and reels flash before me—female, male, young, smiling, toned bodies. Irritated that I spontaneously imagine the bodies society persistently pushes as the norm and ideal, I have to make a conscious effort to cast off their pressure and imagine other kinds of bodies. Ordinary, imperfect ones, but also those I do not often see, neither in the media nor in reality: bodies that do not fit in, bodies from the fringes.

Around every corner or line of text, a trap constantly awaits us—tempting us to perceive our bodies as something uniquely ours, intimate or "natural," while ignoring the extent to which societal rules and assumptions shape them, influencing our behavior, acceptance, or safety. The performances you are about to watch expose these constructs and shed light on various aspects of certain bodies and sexualities—those that are normative and those that elude norms, those that are privileged and those that are oppressed, those that are free and those that are endangered. The selected works embrace bodies in resistance and emancipation from often violent political and patriarchal frameworks, creating a space where, at least in the theater, they remain unconquered.

Join the festival audience, where, body next to body, we will see and acknowledge one another, hear each other breathe, laugh, and perhaps sigh at the same time. In a world where we are increasingly disconnected, politically fragmented, and capitalistically individualized—having long lost the possibility of any shared imagination of the future, progress, or salvation—the moments in which our bodies sit quietly and look in the same direction, at least in the theater, are already something to me. They are already a lot.