If we could make the world anew, what would we build? This concern opens the festival and will continue to resonate during the weeks that follow. We present a diverse selection of performances that highlight different worlds and identities and create new forms of theatre.

The 2024 festival edition kicks off with the new creation from Back to Back Theatre, an Australian company of self-identifying disabled people. Through a chaotic team-building exercise, they explore themes of inclusion and identity. Toshiki Okada returns to the festival with a poetic performance in which a spaceship exports the Japanese language to other galaxies, emerging along the way as an ode to all the identities falling in between established boxes.

What does it mean to be a dancer when dancing is forbidden? In We Came to Dance, Ali Asghar Dashti & Nasim Ahmadpour ask how it feels like to be forced to refrain from doing something you have dedicated your entire life to. Mohamed El Khatib portrays romantic love in old age: he invites people aged between 75 and 102 to share their love stories with us.

Zuleikha Chaudhari had to cancel her performance The Muslim Vanishes as part of this edition of the festival. We invite her for a talk at the Festival Centre on May 14 at 7 pm to discuss the political context that led to the cancellation of the performance and the role of theatre today in India (and elsewhere).