The Capital Fringe Festival, D.C.’s most consistent dispenser of kooky theater and performance, recently announced its full 2013 lineup. The annual gathering starts July 11 with 129 plays that take off their clothes, slap around Shakespeare, dance awkwardly, commit murder, and take off their clothes again. It’s all very, well, Fringe.

The people who make Capital Fringe Fringey every year know that they’re working with limitations—specifically financial ones, but also perhaps aesthetic ones. The challenge: Create a work that will stand out among more than 100 other plays. (If someone’s gotta show his dick to get Fringe-famous, so be it.) Despite the push to be differently different, though, Fringies demonstrate each year that they ultimately occupy the same headspace. Themes and similar approaches emerge perennially. Burlesque! Solo performance! Social media! PTSD! And sex—always, forever, sex. Above, a look at how some of this year’s Fringe shows intersect.

Diagram by Brooke Hatfield