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. 

PRODUCTION GRIP & Theater Utrecht (Dorothy Blokland, Dagmar Bokma, Anne Breure, Owen Cicilia, Kelly de Haan, Sophie de Loos, Hanne Doms, Maurice Dujardin, Seline Gosling, Anneleen Hermans, Tom Hemmer, Myrthe Ligtenberg, Rudi Meulemans, Lize Meynaerts, Klaartje Oerlemans, Jennifer Piasecki, Luisa Redenbacher, Florien Smits, Sylvie Svanberg, Ad van Mierlo, Pien Visser, Lenette Vlasman, Vincent Wijlhuizen, Nele Verreyken)
IN COLLABORATION WITH Dance On Ensemble
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