Fred and Dom meet each other near the bridge that leads away from their small town next to big white letters that read: NOT-THE-CITY. They are both different – and that’s no big deal to them. Dom would never dare call Fred that dreaded word because he used to do gymnastics in leotards and Fred doesn’t question Dom’s decision to use the male pronoun. Yet how long can you stay strong for a friend when you have to fight the rest of the world just to be who you are? At what point do you give up – on yourself and on the other person?

In his multi award-winning youth play, Olivier Sylvestre addresses the themes of transgenderism, diversity and homosexuality – things that have been on everybody’s lips lately, but nobody has actually been talking about. With touching insight and empathy, the author demonstrates that the easiest thing in the world – namely, being yourself – is sometimes the hardest thing to do.

Selection committee statement excerpt:
“As Dom and Fred grapple with their fate, they confront us with an abyss of societal pressures and expectations. (…) Until the very end, the production leaves a key question open: whether failure to live up to the norm is as inevitable as the law of gravity.”