On Saturday, 18 October 2025, Boris Nikitin presented Essay on Dying at Teatro a l’Avogaria. One year after his father’s death, the author and director began writing about his father’s experience with ALS, a disease that progressed rapidly: less than a year passed between diagnosis and death. From the outset, his father considered assisted suicide, a practice that is legal in Switzerland. In Essay on Dying, Nikitin interweaves this experience with his own coming-out story, creating a radical and deeply intimate work that reflects on the meaning of exposing oneself publicly and embracing vulnerability. First presented in 2019 and met with critical acclaim from the international press, the performance returned to Venice following the 2023 Biennale as part of Nikitin’s visiting professorship at Università Iuav di Venezia.