“Background Fucker” moves between memory and myth, between a country learning how to stand and a body learning how to survive within it.

Set in the wild-wild East of 1990s Estonia, this performance traces a childhood shaped by two forces pulling in opposite directions: the instability of a newly independent country and the flood of Western culture rushing in. Somewhere in that mix appears the cowboy, straight from American TV – a symbol of freedom, confidence, and certainty. For a queer, female-bodied child growing up in a deeply patriarchal and homophobic environment, he becomes more than a character. He becomes a survival tool and a way to feel safe, to fit in, to pass as “normal”.

What starts as a childhood game, forms into an identity, teaching them to mimic the very systems they were struggling against. Patterns of patriarchy, performative masculinity and heteronormativity were absorbed, and in the process, parts of the self were denied—leaving them as a background character in their own life.

This performance stays within that tension: between survival and self-erasure, between who they are and who they learned to be – and asks what it takes to unlearn a role that once kept them alive.