Barbara Lehtna "Backround Fucker"

“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.

Yee-haw. Or something like that.

Barbara Lehtna is a theatremaker and performer from Estonia. Her artistic processes have been primarily focused on exploring self-representation and expression of queer and female bodies within the liminal post-Soviet spaces. Barbara’s works are built upon a cross-disciplinary approach to working within different performance practices such as theatre, opera, and dance.

Her processes often involve inquiring into personal archives, everydayness, and humor.

In 2021 she graduated with an MA degree in Performance Practices from ArtEZ University of Arts in the Netherlands and she has started her fellowship at Amsterdam University of Arts as a part of the DAS THIRD Cycle Research Group. Barbara believes that art should be intimate and always political.

Director, performer: Barbara Lehtna

Dramaturgy: Karolin Poska

Videography: Maasha Pavlova

Thank you: DAS Third peers and mentors, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Gertrudes Ielas Teatris, Kanuti Gildi SAAL, MARC – Milvus Art Residency Centre, Matthew Page, Lúa Mayenco

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