Monster

Svenja is white, but inside she feels Black. She is passionate about “other cultures”, and her blonde dreadlocks could easily rival those of Rastafarians. Svenja’s open-mindedness is also expressed in her family-planning; for her, “mixed” children represent the future in a post-racist society.

In her first work for Schauspiel Köln, director Anta Helena Recke embarks on a visual investigation of white femininity and family dynamics in the context of white supremacy and cultural appropriation. She creates images of commonplace boundary transgressions and looks for coping strategies within children’s collective revenge fantasies, as they resist exoticism by their white mothers.

With her productions Middle Reich and The Humiliations of Humankind, Anta Helena Recke was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. Her works cross the border between drama and visual art. With conceptual acuity, they enable a reflection on our own perception and design counter-worlds to pre-existing destructive conventions.