Soft Tactics for Hard Times '26

In Soft Tactics for Hard Times, theatre maker Merel Severs brings together different voices through dialogue, performative interventions, and playful assignments. Following Soft Tactics for Hard Times '25, this second edition at Frascati departs from the growing physical and verbal threats against the queer community, both in public spaces and in legislation worldwide. From microaggressions to rights being challenged or taken away, from family expectations to systemic challenges, how do we deal with this growing threat?

Merel Severs enters into conversation with Simcha Zijlstra about the necessity of a queer self-defense collective. As violence against queer people continues to rise, Merel and Simcha explore ways of sending a clear message: we are a community that, when necessary, can fight back and stand up for one another. Can we also fight with softness, as a way to connect rather than harden? Soft Tactics for Hard Times is about care and connection as forms of resistance. Together, we are stronger.

You are invited to think along. What does it mean to protect one another? What forms of solidarity are possible, and which ones do we still need to invent?

Guests of the night

 Simcha Zijlstra

Simcha is a campaigner at Greenpeace Netherlands and a theatre maker by origin. In his spare time, he creates educational content about Palestine from a Jewish perspective, and is an opinion maker and activist. In his free time, Simcha loves to spend time in the kitchen.

 Ahmed El Gendy 

Ahmed is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the wonders and weights of entanglement and encounter. They are currently developing a performance project around the Mediterranean Sea, working with the agency of the water, the politicised gaze, and kink. Alongside their artistic practice, Ahmed facilitates queer play-fight grappling gatherings, creating space for physical negotiation, intensity, and humour as tools for being together in the world.

  Yun Lee

Yun Lee is a Taiwanese American artist working with the mediums of sound, movement, and workshops. He works with martial arts movements to explore topics of intimacy and conflict in queer identity and community. He sees martial arts not only as sports or fighting tools, but as cultural and political archives, and embodied technologies for facilitating expression and relation.