FRANK (2025)
THE MONSTROUS AND HORROR
THE 3RD PART OF A SPECULATIVE FABULATED TRILOGY
Somewhere between the ritual, the apocalypse, and the carnival, where the flesh can deviate and corrupt to challenge narrated identity until it bursts and becomes unbearable.
FRANK, as in open, honest, direct, and short for Frankenstein, observes that which the speaking being has placed not “in here” but “out there” on the other side of the border. As the quest to distort the familiar continues, Cherish Menzo examines the monster’s figure, its various relations to the idea of humanhood, and the horrors these relations entail. More so than (re)producing a physical or visual portrayal of the monster, Cherish Menzo is interested in how the monstrous is a reification and metaphoric embodiment of the beliefs and narratives that terrify, horrify, and yet also attract us.
Cherish researches the process of bringing the pre-monster stage or horror into a metaphoric embodiment and for that process to be the generator of image-making and the performative, sonic, and text material that plays with the tension of ambivalence, uncanniness, enigma, uncertainty, and corruption.
In continuation of JEZEBEL and DARKMATTER, in FRANK, distortion will once again be one of the main ingredients to generate material. In addition, Cherish will look into the action of decay and how something gradually breaking down and getting less or worse can be another attempt to distort a form or information.
FRANK, will be the closing of a trilogy. A trilogy that does not consist of chronological storytelling or a series of events, but maybe more a trifold of spaces, universes, fictions, and conversations that regard Blackness, bringing the Black body to the center and attempting to explore the African Diaspora’s multi-intersections in recognizable, metaphorical, and abstract ways.
CREDITS
CONCEPT AND DIRECTION Cherish Menzo CREATION AND PERFORMANCE Malick Cissé, Mulunesh, Omagbitse Omagbemi SOUND DESIGN Maria Muehombo a.k.a M I M I VIDEO DESIGN Andrea Casetti SOUND AND VIDEO ENGINEERING Arthur De Vuyst SET DESIGN Morgana Machado Marques LIGHTING DESIGN Ryoya Fudetani DRAMATURGY Johanne Affricot, Renée Copraij COSTUMES Cherish Menzo TEXT Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Cherish Menzo ARTISTIC ADVICE Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Nicole Geertruida TECHNICIAN ON TOUR Pieter-Jan Buelens, Arthur De Vuyst, Ryoya Fudetani, Hadrien Jeangette GRAPHIC DESIGN Nick Mattan THANKS TO Mildred Caprino, Anne Goedhart, Rodney Frederik & Winti Formation “Krin Ati,” Daryll Geldrop, Ernie Wolf, Sandra Menzo, Shavelie Menzo, Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, Sarah Garnaud, Alice Bröker, Johanna Cool
TEXTS ‘Disembodied Narrator’ – Cherish Menzo, inspired by and with fragments of the introduction text of ‘The Host’ in Wes Anderson’s ‘Astroid City’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984’. Fragments, alterations, and reinterpretations of chapter 4 of ‘The Modern Prometheus’ – Mary Shelley. ‘THE WITNESS, THE MONSTROUS’ – Cherish Menzo ‘Bam Bam’ – Chaka Demus and Pliers, Sister Nancy, Toots & the Maytals
a production by Cherish Menzo / GRIP & Theater Utrecht
in collaboration with Dance on Ensemble / Bureau Ritter
INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION A propic – Line Rousseau, Marion Gauvent
CO-PRODUCTION Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Carreau du Temple – Etablissement culturel et sportif de la Ville de Paris, Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Julidans Amsterdam, PACT Zollverein funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Festival Montpellier Danse 2025, le Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – Direction Maud Le Pladec, Tanzquartier Wien, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança, festival d’Automne à Paris, One Dance Festival, Perpodium
WITH THE SUPPORT OF Centre nationale de la danse à Pantin, BRONKS, KWP Kunstenwerkplaats, l’Atelier de Paris – Centre de développement chorégraphique national
WITH THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF the Flemish Government, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Cronos Invest, BNG Bank Theaterprijs, Charlotte Köhler Prijs van het Cultuurfonds, Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union and the Goethe-Institut
This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union
INSPIRATION, REFERENCES, BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘Baka Gorong’ a place at the back of the former plantations and in front of the swamps (wetlands) where the enslaved in Suriname secretly went to perform their rituals and to consider fleeing.
‘Jab Jab from Grenada’: The word Jab was derived from the French-Creole word ‘Diable’ meaning ‘devil’, so a masquerader playing Jab Jab is playing the devil. Jab is a satirical representation of the evil inflicted by the white colonialist on the enslaved.
‘Black Skin, White Masks’ – Frantz Fanon
‘Plantation Memories, Episodes Of Everyday Racism’ – Grada Kilomba
‘Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection’ – Julia Jristeva
‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’ – Mary Shelly
‘Monstrous Intimacies’ – Christina Sharpe
‘Venus in Two Acts’ – Saidiya Hartman
‘My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix Performing Transgender Rage’ – Susan Stryker
‘For the Wild: Dr Bayo Akomolafe on Coming alive to other senses /300’ (podcast) ‘AS TEMPERATURES RISE, EP 9. Bayo Akomolafe: Monsters, Fugitivity and Sitting in the Lostness of Things’ (podcast)
‘The Horror Film’ – Peter Hutchings
‘Asteroid City’ – Wes Anderson (the host and General Gibson)
‘This Thing of Darkness’ Racial Discourse in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ – Allan Lloyd Smith, University of East Anglia
For more information, press map, riders and financial conditions please contact Line Rousseau or Marion Gauvent