The Boys are kissing
Zak Zarafshan
Festival generations of love & focus adolescence
Q&A: 14.05
EN Two nine-year-old boys kiss in the schoolyard and suburban calm fractures into urgent debate. Parents Chloe and Amira, and Matt and Sarah – neighbours who share wellness routines, carefully styled homes, and progressive values – meet to discuss “the incident.” But good intentions prove fragile when they collide with unspoken anxieties and self-justification. What begins as a private matter quickly becomes public theatre, amplified by WhatsApp threads and the pressure to respond correctly.
British-Iranian playwright Zak Zarafshan’s sharp-witted debut, first seen in London, exposes how quickly tolerance meets its limits when tested. Arguments framed as being “about the children” reveal adult fears, contradictions, and the performance of open-mindedness. Director Anne Simon, associate artist at the Théâtres de la Ville, directs the play in her distinctive physical and sensorial language.
Alongside the parents, two queer guardian angels intervene with theatrical mischief. Their presence shifts the action into a heightened register, where domestic realism meets camp fantasy and moral panic turns into spectacle. As questions of LGBTQIA+ education resurface across Europe, including in Luxembourg, The Boys are kissing asks not only what is said, but how we stage ourselves in saying it.
