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.

The performance space fabulates on the Baka Gorong, a place located at the back of the former plantations and in front of the wetlands, where enslaved people in Suriname secretly went to carry out Winti rituals – demonized under Dutch colonial rule – and to consider fleeing.

FRANK will be the closing of a trilogy. Following JEZEBEL and DARKMATTER, Cherish creates 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.

Workshop with Cherish Menzo

DISTORTION – DISSONANCE – DECAY is a workshop with choreographer Cherish Menzo, exploring her research into movement and monstrosity. This workshop is open to performers, artists, dancers, movers and makers and will explore Menzo’s method and current research.

Post-Show DJ Set

Join us after the show for a DJ Set from Tekhole!

Tekhole is a Southern African multi-genre DJ based between Glasgow & Berlin. Their genre-fluid sound is shaped by the heavy basslines of Gqom and untamed tribal percussion. Though firmly rooted in breaks and bass, Tekhole takes an experimental approach to sound, often blending field recordings, interview clips & deconstructed drums into their live sets to build dynamic soundscapes that seamlessly weave between electro, techno, and UK Funky. Their versatile and boundary-pushing style has led them to support the likes of Sherelle, Martyn Bootyspoon, Sama’ Abdulhadi & Neffa-T, to name a few.

Through their resident shows on Radio Buena Vida and Clyde Built Radio, Tekhole uses the airwaves as an introspective portal, exploring feelings of home, sonic kinship and collective consciousness.

This performance is spoken in English and French with BSL Interpretation by Ali Gordon. The Interpreter will be in a fixed position on stage.

Sub Pacs are available from Tramway Box Office.

Essay & Written Translations of Performance Texts in English, Dutch & French are available here.

Latecomers may not be admitted.

Sensory Notes

• Loud Music

• Sudden Loud Sounds

• Full Blackout

• Flashing Lights

• Strobe

• Smoke or Haze

• Sudden Moving, Falling or Flying Objects

• Audience Interaction (spoken)

• Audience Interaction (touch) 

• Close Proximity to Bodily Fluids (sweat)

• Mess (water)

  Ear Defenders, Ear Plugs and Dark Glasses will be available. 

  A breakout space will be available pre, during and after the performance. Note: for safety reasons, re-entry during the performance may not be permitted.

Language: English & French. Text is used in a poetic way and subtitles are purposely not always included.

English, Dutch & French translations of performance texts are available here.

VENUE & SEATING

T1 - Tramway (ground floor). Wheelchair accessible. Tramway venue access information.

Seated-  Immersive stage side row seating of fixed chairs with no arms. Step Free. Seating Bank with flip down, padded seats with arms. 1 row step free. Wheelchair spaces available to reserve via Tramway Box Office

Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Visit our Festival Access Page.

• Reference to death and killing

• Contextual reference to colonialism and enslavement

Artist Bio

Cherish Menzo (°1988, The Netherlands) is a choreographer and dancer, who lives in Brussels and Amsterdam. In 2013 she graduated from The Urban Contemporary (JMD) at the ‘Hogeschool voor de Kunsten’ in Amsterdam.  

Cherish has appeared in the work of Lisbeth Gruwez (THE SEA WITHIN), Jan Martens (THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER, any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones), Nicole Beutler (6: THE SQUARE), as well as collaborations with the likes of Akram Khan, Ula Sickle, Olivier Dubois and Eszter Salamon. Her powerful movement language also comes into its own in her own work, which tours internationally.

In 2019 Cherish worked at Frascati Producties on JEZEBEL, a dance performance inspired by the phenomenon Video Vixen from the hip-hop clips of the 90s. Jezebel, a contemporary hip-hop honey, refuses to be defined by others and shakes off her image by deconstructing and redefining it.
In May 2022, during Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, DARKMATTER  premiered, a duet in which she and Camilo Mejía Cortés, with the help of the distorted rap choir, search for ways to detach their bodies and the daily reality in which they move from a forced perception. In the context of DARKMATTER , Cherish also gives workshops on the chopped & screwed technique, a process from hip-hop music that Cherish applies to the moving and performing body in the performance.

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 discover how something gradually breaking down and getting less or worse can be another attempt to distort a form or information.

Cherish received the Amsterdam FRINGE and FRINGE International Bursary Awards 2019 with JEZEBEL. JEZEBEL was selected in 2020 for both the Dutch and Flemish Theaterfestival, which presented a jury selection of the best performances of the season and received the prestigious Charlotte Köhler award by the Prins Bernhard Foundation (Amsterdam) in 2022.
 DARKMATTER was selected for both the Belgian Theater Festival and its Dutch counterpart. With DARKMATTER, Cherish received the BNG Bank Theater Prize (2023) and the Dutch Drama Jury prize for best direction (2023).

For her artistic work, she is interested in the transformation of the body on stage and in the “embodiment” of different physical images. Implementing distortion, decay, and dissonance, Cherish attempts to detach bodies from forced perceptions and their daily corporeal realities, underlining the complexity and contradictory nature of images that seem recognizable at first glance. Glitching the ‘’common’’ lexical, the lexical of the speaking being, she seeks the Uncanny, the Enigmatic, and the Monstrous to give shape to – and materialize speculative forms and fictions.

ABOUT GRIP

GRIP was founded in 2014 by choreographer and dancer Jan Martens and manager Klaartje Oerlemans.

From 2023 on, GRIP choreographers Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens, Cherish Menzo, and Steven Michel act together as artistic directors. They do so in close dialogue with Klaartje Oerlemans and Rudi Meulemans, who coordinates and facilitates the dialogue between the four makers in his role of artistic coordinator.

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

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


PRODUCTION GRIP & Theater Utrecht (Dagmar Bokma, Anne Breure, Maartje de Groot, Teun de Loos, Philip den Uyl, Hanne Doms, Seline Gosling, Anneleen Hermans, Tom Hemmer, Leonie Jekel, Myrthe Ligtenberg, Thomas Lloyd, Rudi Meulemans, Lize Meynaerts, Klaartje Oerlemans, Jennifer Piasecki, Florien Smits, Sylvie Svanberg, Bregt van Deursen, Ad van Mierlo, Yoni Vermeire , Nele Verreyken Vincent Wijlhuizen)

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