Monster is a Mirror (at Schauspielhaus Zürich)
- Tallulah Patricia B
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Meloe invited me to a Generalprobe of (WHAT YOU'LL FIND) ON THE WAY TO BECOMING
A SOMATIC RITUAL by Ta-Nia. No big framing, no expectation. Just: come. At the time, it felt casual. In hindsight, it was precise. It pulled me back into theatre. Not as a child participating, like I once did at Junges Theater Gessneralle, but as someone watching differently.
Less absorbed. More aware.
Watching not just what happens on stage, but how it’s built, who is in the room, how it lands, who leans in, who pulls away. That’s when something shifted. Theatre stopped being something I had done. It became something I could read. Through Meloe, I met Yuvviki. And that’s when it stopped being a one-off. Because she didn’t just invite me once. She kept taking me along. No big gestures. No over-explaining. Just consistent access. That kind of access doesn’t announce itself. But it compounds. So when I found myself at Schauspielhaus Zürich for Monster, I wasn’t just attending a play. I was stepping into something I had already begun to understand.
The play itself doesn’t guide you. It loops and re-loops.
Fragments. Voices. Children asking questions that sound simple until you realize they are not:
“Mama, why don’t I look like you?”
“Mama, who am I?”
“Mama, where do I come from?”
Again and again.
At first, you think: repetition. Then you realize that this is not a stylistic choice. This is a structure. Because these questions don’t just disappear. They don’t get resolved once and then get neatly archived or tucked away. They follow. They evolve. They resurface in different contexts, different ages, across different rooms.
A white Swiss mother raising Black children. Trying to explain difference in a way that protects, that normalizes, that grounds. She talks about skin like variation. Like something neutral. But the world outside doesn’t treat it that way.
And the play doesn’t dramatize that with big moments. It stays with the small ones. Subtly. Punchingly. Comments. Looks. Curiosity that lingers a second too long. Hair becoming something to explain. Teachers misreading silence. Nothing explosive. Everything cumulative.
That’s where it sits.
And then there is the audience.
Right behind us: a woman. Older. White. Swiss, most likely. And visibly, audibly not just disengaged — but fully resistant.
It started subtly. Loud breathing. Shifting. Small comments under her breath. Then it became clearer. "Scheiss Theater" she mumbles. Every time “Mama” came up, she said it:
"nicht schon wieder".
Not again.
Not quiet enough to ignore. Not loud enough to confront directly. Just enough to make sure people around her knew. At one point, she even turned on her phone light. A small, disruptive gesture, but clearly intentional enough. Not accidental. Not unaware. It wasn’t just that she didn’t like the play. It felt like she wanted that dislike to be visible.
And that’s when something clicked.
Because what was happening behind us was not separate from what was happening on stage. It was part of it. Unintentionally so.
On stage, the play was showing how identity is formed under a gaze. In the audience, that gaze was reacting in real time. Her frustration wasn’t about the structure. It wasn’t about pacing. It was about perspective.
It seemed like the repetition annoyed her because it wasn’t her repetition. The questions exhausted her because they weren’t questions she had to carry.
What felt like “too much” to her was, for others, simply ongoing. At some point, the play and the audience started to mirror each other.
On stage: children asking to be understood. Behind us: someone refusing to engage.
On stage: a mother trying to explain a world that doesn’t make sense. Behind us: someone insisting that the world should not need explaining.
After the play, in the foyer, it became even more explicit.
The same energy, now verbalized by someone else:
"The theatre is becoming too political".
She doesn’t come here to be lectured. Why does skin color even need to be thematized in theater? There was no hesitation. No reflection. Just irritation. Shared with two Black women.
As if something had been imposed on her. But nothing about this was new. The only thing that had shifted was what was being centered.
Theatre has always been political. It has always staged power, conflict, difference.
But for a long time, those politics aligned with the majority of the audience. They felt neutral.
Now, that alignment is shifting. And for some, that feels like disruption.
Sitting there, between stage, audience, and foyer, something became very clear.
I wasn’t just watching a play.
I was watching a Swiss institution in motion. There I say, evolving.
On stage: narratives expanding. In the audience: resistance surfacing. At the foyer: that resistance verbalising and finding language.
And in between, people like Meloe and Yuvviki, quietly reshaping who gets to be part of that space in the first place. There was a moment during the play where I thought: What if I had stayed in theatre as a child?
But by the end of the evening, that question had shifted. Because this isn’t about going back.
It’s about seeing clearly where I stand now. Not on stage. Not in the seat behind me.
But somewhere in between. Trying to read both. Able to sit in that feeling, that tension without needing to resolve it immediately.
Monster doesn’t give you an ending.
It gives you a mirror.
And sometimes, that mirror is not on stage.
Sometimes, it’s the person sitting right behind you.
End Credits
Monster stays. Not as a story, but as a state and as a mirror. And maybe the end credits begin exactly here. Not as a list, but as a recognition of what was carried together on that stage, and in that room.
MONSTER – A Visual Nightmare Analysis
by Recke / Lehmann / Froelicher; Commissioned by Schauspielhaus Zürich
Directed by: Anta Helena Recke, Maxi Menja, Lehmann, Anna Froelicher
World Premiere was on April 11, 2026, Pfauen in Zürich
Duration: 1 hour 25 minutes, no intermission
“I am not a monster, I am a mother.”“You are not a monster,” I said. But I lied. What I meant was: it is not such a terrible thing to be a monster.
— Ocean Vuong
What unfolds on stage resists clean categorization.
A group of children moving through a landscape that feels abstract and less physical than psychological. Figures appearing like symbols from a hidden world. The collective unconscious as a carrier. Historical and instinctive fears as a horizon.
Monster turns to the early formation of the self, and to the relationship that shapes it most fundamentally: mother and child. More precisely, white mothers and non-white children in a German-speaking context.
A relationship historically marked. From colonial entanglements to post-war Germany and the so-called “occupation children,” and into the present. A history that extends into Switzerland, through missionary work, private plantation ownership, and a long-standing entanglement with colonial structures that is rarely centered in public discourse.
The question the piece holds is simple, but not easy:
What happens to a child growing up in a white context, when their process of becoming is inevitably shaped in relation to its norms and its history?
Through language, movement, and a sensory dramaturgy that borders on the uncanny, the work by Recke / Lehmann / Froelicher connects individual self-formation with broader socio-political structures. Not by explaining. But by insisting.
Dramaturgy
Meloe Gennai; Holding the thread between stage and structure. Between what is shown and what it sits within.
Cast
Diliyet Ykalo, Lena Urzendowsky, Imani Galliard, Julian Frischknecht, Youma Camara, Joy-Elisah Wespi-Tschopp, Tyrone Yavwa, Karin Pfammatter, Mirjam Rast, Zoé Yvonne Vianden
Each presence necessary. Nothing ornamental. Nothing neutral.
Concept, Direction & Stage
Recke / Lehmann / Froelicher
Stage Collaboration:
Anka Bernstetter
Costumes:
Pola Kardum Music: Ludwig Abraham
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