An interactive queer horror story about how fear and desire are closely intertwined.
Ezra Menard
Location: Nowhere, Circle Studio
- GENRE: Performance Art, Theatre
- THEME: Body horror, Connection, Queer Stories
- LANGUAGE: English
- CONTENT NOTE: This performance does NOT make use of jumpscares
- ACCESSIBILITY: Assistance dogs welcome, Genderneutral toilets, Toilet for wheelchair users, Wheelchair accessible
info
This Unrelenting Skin is an English-language interactive body horror experience. Together, the artist and a participant play out a story for an intimate audience. The participant plays Henry: a man looking for romantic connection with other men, but whose own fears and anxieties constantly hold him back. Henry undergoes a bodily transformation that brings him in direct conflict with his own desires. Searching for solace in a small gay club bathroom, Henry encounters a barmannamed David and discovers that he is perhaps not as alone as he thinks. Through means of the horror genre, inspired by transformative play and LARP (live-action roleplay), the participant and audience are invited to find the beauty in being different and to come in contact with their own desires, even if it feels scary.
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Do you want to be part of this performance? That is possible. One person will be selected to be a cast member. Read more about it by clicking this link.
Biography
Ezra Menard is an American-born interactive and immersive theater designer based in Utrecht, NL. He creates theatrical experiences taking place in narrative-driven, fictional worlds. By utilizing LARP (live-action roleplay) and game mechanics in his performances, he invites the audience to take on an active role and participate in influencing the stories he creates.
Through the use of fictional settings, Ezra strives to sketch scenarios in which his audience is encouraged to examine themes such as (queer) identity, togetherness, and personal struggle through a new and heightened perspective.
From a young age, Ezra has been fascinated with horror media, often dismissed as a surface level genre–trashy, exploitative, disgusting. A medium used to shock and and confound, leaving its audiences with an unpleasant aftertaste. He chooses to refute this claim, believing that horror can lend itself to exploring deeper societal issues and personal topics that we struggle with from day-to-day. This same sentiment is reflected back in his work, that reckoning with the idea of being different, though sometimes confusing and frightening, doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In 2025, Ezra graduated from the BA Interactive Performance Design from HKU with This Unrelenting Skin.