Back to Back Theatre have been producing works for over 30 years as a theater company that centers performers who identify as neurodivergent* or having intellectual disabilities. The group has been challenging societal assumptions through their shrewd criticality and provocative performances, and was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre at the 2024 Venice Biennale. With this excitement still running high, they return to Kyoto Experiment for the first time in two years to present a new work.

A warehouse at “the end of the world”: as dark clouds loom overhead and dissonant sounds echo throughout the space, three workers assemble a strangely twisted structure. One man monitors their performance. At first glance, it appears to be a “workplace that values diversity and equality.” However, the situation takes a drastic turn as soon as the characters approach the limit of their exhaustion and capacity to care. The sense of respect towards others’ genders and personhood fades away, gradually exposing the mutual prejudices, discriminatory views, and greed for power. As today’s world continues its distortion with escalating bad behaviors and self-righteous bellows, who will be the next scapegoat? While the work unveils an unexpected ending, its opening statement—“Multiple Bad Things is theatre. It is not real”—remains utterly opaque. Has this already happened in real life? Or is it presenting a prophetic apocalypse of our near future?