Anatomies of Desire could have been a performance about the mechanisms of violence in the struggle for love—Othello, for power—Macbeth, or for abstract ideals—Julius Caesar. But the year 2020 condensed and partly suspended the very idea of violence. For a time, fear replaced the desire to attack. For a time, the only gesture that anchored us in immediate reality was the washing of hands and the sanitising of surrounding objects. An everyday gesture suddenly acquired mythical and obsessive dimensions. Three Shakespearean scenes are connected through their reference to the failed gesture of purification. The attempt to sanitise violent action is, inevitably, a failed creation.