Who or what do we actually call a monster? And who decides that? Which systems, technologies, and narratives position certain people as less human and fundamentally different? This is called “othering”: drawing a line that pushes some outside the boundary of “us.” Many of these ideas stem from structures and beliefs that have been passed down through generations.
In her work, theatre maker Cherish Menzo explores what happens when we do not treat the monster as a fictional trope—a mirror for human fears, social anxieties, and taboo desires—but instead examine the systems that determine who is labelled as deviant.
This programme in collaboration with IMPAKT shows that the monstrous is not only something from myths or films, but is also built into our society. An evening that invites us to remember, redefine and perhaps even reimagine the monstrous, and ourselves.
This programme is connected to FRANK, a performance by Cherish Menzo, which is currently touring in Netherlands.
FRANK is the final part of a trilogy. The trilogy does not tell one story in order, and it is not about a series of events. Instead, it is more like three different spaces or worlds. These worlds include different ideas, stories, and conversations about Blackness. The work puts the Black body at the center and explores the many sides of the African Diaspora in recognizable, metaphorical, and abstract ways.
Frank is performing on Tuesday, March 31 at Stadsschouwburg Utrecht.
The IMPAKT Festival 2026 takes place from 8 to 12 April and focuses on Techno-Ancestrality. During the five-day program, there will be performances, exhibitions, films, and talks. Click here for more information.
Cherish Menzo (1988, Netherlands) is a choreographer and dancer. She lives and works in Brussels and Amsterdam. In her work, Cherish Menzo explores how the body can transform on stage and how ideas, images, and identities are physically embodied. Through distortion, decay, and dissonance, she seeks to free bodies from ingrained perceptions and their everyday physical reality.
Writer and director Mirella Muroni lives and works in Amsterdam. She studied screenwriting and directing (fiction) at the Nederlandse Film Academy in Amsterdam and has since been writing stories featuring women of color in leading roles. In addition to films, she also writes children's books, novels, and poetry, often in a magical-realist style in which she searches for the beauty of imperfect storytelling. Since her debut Tijd van Gaan (1995), she has made several short films, including Ik Ben (2018), Black Muse (2022), Retroactively (2022), Stop Bugging Me (2023), Horses (2023), and Light Eye People (2024). Forget All You Know (About Aliens) (2025) is her first feature film.
Edward Akintola Hubbard is an anthropologist, artist, curator and co-founder of the Amsterdam-based artist collective DARKMATTER. His artistic practice, experimental ethnography, sits at the intersection of contemporary art and social anthropology. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University in the USA and has taught courses at the University of the West Indies, Harvard University, New York University and Utrecht University on a variety of subjects including anthropology, art theory, cinema, media studies, gender studies, urban studies, gothic studies and African diaspora studies. His artistic practice involves ethnographic research, photography, video, installation and writing. Meanwhile, his approach to curation merges anthropology, cultural theory, media, fine art, music, film and literature.
“Blackness is indefinitely associated with monstrosity. Indeed, the monster’s racial genealogy has been penned by white modernity. However, the monster, is not “a what” – the stable image of inherent evil. Rather, the monster “is a how”: it is “the program lurking in the image, the anamorphosis of the casual image”. The monster is a “multicultural technology”, operating as a critique of subjectivity that aims to keep identities static and standardized in accordance with the so-called “natural” order. Therefore, the monster is indeed a disruption, a glitch, that does not seek to destroy, as the trope would have it, but to transform through trickery, surprise, and deception. The monster is an agent of distortion.
Theater Utrecht is accessible for wheelchair users. We strive to offer an inclusive experience for everyone who visits us. Would you like to attend a performance but don’t have the means to pay for a ticket? Please email kassa@theaterutrecht.nl.
