Monstrous Utopias : Performance and the Radical Possibility of Hope

Monstrous Utopias examines how monsters in performance, theatre, media, and literature reflect and subvert societal understandings.

This book considers the ethical and hopeful work of monsters and examines ways in which playwrights, theatre and performance artists, film artists, drag artists, dancers, cultural practitioners, and activists have engaged the monster to reflect the ongoing fears (including racist, sexist, homophobic, and others) of our society and how those monsters might offer a radical sense of hope. Providing perspectives by top scholars in the field and curated by Michael Mark Chemers and Analola Santana, two leaders in the field of monster studies, Monstrous Utopias is a global and exploratory collection that offers meaningful insights into the ways in which the figure of the monster can be used to radically envisage utopias and provide moments of hope to audiences.

These essays are essential reading for Theatre and Performance students of all levels as well as scholars. It will also be an enlightening text for those interested in monstrosity and Cultural Studies more broadly.

Michael Mark Chemers is Professor and Chair of the Department of Performance, Play & Design at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA; the author of The Monster in Theatre History: This Thing of Darkness (Routledge, 2018); the co-editor, with Analola Santana, of Monsters in Performance: Essays on the Aesthetics of Disqualification (Routledge, 2022) and The Figure of the Monster in Global Theatre (Routledge, 2024), and with Ekaterina Trachsel and Gerald Siegmund of Staging Monstrous Bodies (Routledge, 2025); and the founding Director of the UCSC Center for Monster Studies.

Analola Santana is Associate Professor of Theater at Dartmouth College, USA. She is the author of Teatro y Cultura de Masas: Encuentros y Debates (2010) and Freak Performances: Dissidence in Latin American Theatre (2018), which considers the significance of theatrical practices that use the “freak” as a medium to explore the continuing effects of colonialism on Latin American identity. She works as a professional dramaturg and is a company member of Mexico’s famed Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes.