The 22nd edition of the international theatre festival Baltic Circle will take place in Helsinki from November 21st to December 6th, 2025. This year’s programme presents an impressive mix of domestic and international premieres, participatory discussions, workshops, and ceremonial readings, alongside nocturnal city walks and club events.

The 2025 festival programme spotlights the body as a tool for resistance and self-expression, and asks us to consider how bodily perceptions shape our awareness of change, safety, and communality.

Kristina Norman’s documentary theatre piece The Dew Point explores the layered meanings of security in an era of (ongoing) war. Tracing the collective history and psyche of the Baltic region through the renovation process of a Soviet-era sauna together with her own father, the piece invites audiences to take a seat on a metaphorical sauna bench and witness how the accumulation of memories and the fog of conflict may ultimately shape us.

Themes of safety and vulnerability are further explored in Mallika Taneja’s Be Careful and Women Walk at Midnight. On the stage of Espoo Theatre, Taneja confronts warped norms with a fierce satire of a society that makes women carry the weight of survival under the shadow of violence. Post-monologue, the city itself transforms into a stage as the Indian artist leads participants on a nocturnal walk around Helsinki to consider everyone’s right to public space.

While Taneja examines women’s right to move safely in the cityscape, Bita Razavi’s Lemmings – A Rehearsal for a Revolution focuses on bodily strategies of everyday resistance and their political implications. Inspired by the ongoing, female-led “Women, Life, Freedom” revolution in Iran (as well as a 1990s video game also titled “Lemmings”), a large ensemble gathers on stage to interpret the tension between collective movement and individual agency.

At Kanneltalo, both curiosity and the senses are awakened from winter’s slumber. Presented as part of the Everyday Priorities – Art, Technology and Accommodations program, two new works stretch the boundaries of communication, accessibility, and perception. Flis Holland’s Unansible combines interstellar signals with alt-texts from the James Webb Space Telescope’s imagery into a layered, unpredictable dialogue. In Untitled [Scents Sense], Joy Mariama Smith guides audiences through selected smells and invites them to reflect on power, boundaries, and sensory hierarchies via the lens of the olfactory.

Building on the festival’s immersive explorations, Andy Cadia presents I AM A MONUMENT, where everyday objects, spoken word, and theatrical fragments merge into an intimate and absurd portrait of the self. The evening shifts gradually from quirky introspection to collective celebration as DJ MALLA transforms the Harju Morgue into a dance club pulsing with shared movement, joy, and sweat.

Equally embodied but staged spontaneously, The Greatest Performance of My Life unfolds as an eight-hour improvised cabaret hosted by Sara Melleri. Unrehearsed and unpredictable, the performance brings together a remarkable ensemble of contemporary artists who lay bare their most intimate fantasies, heartbreaks, and joys on stage. Committed to living fully in the moment, every second is charged with the potential, and the risk, of the unknown.

Finally, in a three-day ceremony at the National Theatre, the Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commission unveils its landmark report in a historical reading. Compiled from nearly 400 testimonies and tens of commissioned expert studies on societal matters important to the Sámi, the event calls on the Finnish government and other major institutions to take concrete steps toward reconciliation and the realization of Sámi rights in Finland.