„sweet & romantic“ is a theatre performance about the things that people are capable of doing
out of love. Not the love that one wants to have, but the real love – based on the fight for
control. Painful, jealous and difficult, that comes in many human configurations. The love
that lasts months and years and does not end with a pretty, final picture after an hour and a
half of a movie screening.

It’s 2026. Ari loves passionately two people: his late gay friend and a radical lesbian activist.
He couldn’t have been with the first one because he doesn’t have a penis and with the other
one – because he identifies himself as a man. Out of the love for the first one he stars to take
testosterone, out of love for the other one – he writes, creates and tries to destroy the concept
of gender. Everything he does in life, he does out of love. To continue to be loved.

He pays a high price for his greedy desire to be loved – both his body and his mind morph.
He locks himself up at home so that he doesn’t have to look at the external world, which tells
him how he should express his feelings. Only a few closed ones are allowed inside his one-
bedroom sanctuary: a dog, his mother, partner, dealer and the remembrance of his late friend.
All of them appear on this arena of love and rearrange the room, and the protagonist’s life,
with their presence.

Outside, the world powers are becoming more and more radical. Fundamentalism is trendy
again. Technological development is strictly and systematically regulated. Citizens don’t
have access to contraceptives, hormones and some other medicaments. Protest after protest
sweeps through the city. The crowds object to the strict control.

Ari, whose addiction to testosterone is getting worse, attempts to find an answer to the
following questions: How did the T particles form this world? Is T responsible for it all? What can be done to forget the exciting photo of a couple kissing in front of a nuclear bomb.

The script was inspired by the works of Paul B. Preciaso, “Queer Art of Failure” by Jack
Halberstram, “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” by Bell Hooks and “The
Burnout Society” by Byung-Chul Han.