Cherish Menzo & GRIP

Unhuman, nonhuman, inhuman, something of a strange or terrifying shape, a deviation from the normal, an imaginary creature, the hybridity that we cannot comprehend, a threatening otherness, making the Self perish.

FRANK, as in open, honest, direct, and short for Frankenstein, is a project where the quest of distorting the familiar continues as Cherish Menzo dives into the monster’s figure, its various relations to the human, 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 monsters are a reification and metaphoric embodiment of the beliefs and narratives that terrify and horrify us. For FRANK, she deviates from the monster being something we must overcome, conquer, master, cast off, etc. 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, and uncertainty.

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
DRAMATURGY Renée Copraij
RESEARCH DRAMATURGY Johanne Affricot, Renée Copraij
SET DESIGN Morgana Machado Marques
LIGHTING DESIGN Ryoya Fudetani
TEXT Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Cherish Menzo
PRODUCTION GRIP (Anneleen Hermans, Rudi Meulemans, Lize Meynaerts, Klaartje Oerlemans, Jennifer Piasecki, Sylvie Svanberg, Nele Verreyken)
INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION A Propic – Line Rousseau, Marion Gauvent
COPRODUCTION Kunstenfestivaldesarts (BE), Carreau du Temple, Etablissement culturel et sportif de la Ville de Paris (FR), Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Julidans Amsterdam, PACT Zollverein funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, more to be confirmed
RESIDENCIES PACT Zollverein (Essen)
WITH THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF the Flemish Government, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government, Cronos Invest

For more information, press map, riders and financial conditions please contact Line Rousseau or Marion Gauvent