Petunia Hu brings Cinderella and Frankenstein’s Monster Are Dead to the Edinburgh Fringe, a powerful new play exploring identity, migration and the search for belonging. Drawing on literary references and lived experience, the production offers a striking contemporary perspective.
Written and directed by Hu, the show follows a young exchange student navigating cultural expectations and self-identity. Blending personal storytelling with symbolic imagery, it reflects the complexities of assimilation and the tension between worlds.
Cinderella and Frankenstein’s Monster Are Dead runs at theSpace Triplex “Studio” from 7–29 August (not 16 or 23 August) at 13:05. Tickets are available here.
You’re the writer and director of Cinderella and Frankenstein’s Monster Are Dead at theSpace Triplex, what can you tell us about the show?
Our show tells the story of Zhao Lan, a Chinese exchange student in the United States who is obsessed with Frankenstein’s monster because she always feels stitched together and out of place.
When her high school drama club announces a production of the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella, she auditions to play the princess, hoping she will finally find her place at school.
But as Zhao Lan struggles with language and the pressure to blend in, she begins to wonder whether either story has the capacity to hold her.
What inspired you to explore identity and belonging through the lens of both Cinderella and Frankenstein?
I’ve always been drawn to retellings of old narratives. I adore writers such as Angela Carter, who reimagined stories like The Erl-King and Little Red Riding Hood through a contemporary feminist lens.
So I challenged myself to tell an immigration story with characters who look like me while creating a dialogue with Western literary classics.
When making the mood board for the play, I found an image of Cinderella sitting beneath a magical tree, reaching toward a white bird that grants her wishes so she can go to the ball and meet the prince.
Around the same time, I came across an image of Frankenstein’s monster also sitting beneath a tree, listening to the birds sing and wishing his voice could be just as beautiful.
Seeing those images side by side, I was struck by the shared journey toward acceptance at the heart of both stories.
For many immigrants, there is an implicit promise that if you work hard, follow the rules, learn the language and make yourself legible to the people around you, you will eventually belong. Cinderella fulfils that promise in some ways. Frankenstein’s monster does not.
I became fascinated by the space between those two endings and the possibility of rejecting both. I wasn’t only interested in reading these characters as women of colour, but in creating a new story with its own shape and rhythm.
The play draws on personal and cultural experiences of immigration, how did you approach balancing the personal with the universal?
I don’t think the personal and the universal are opposites. I believe people connect more to specificity than to something vague that is trying to speak to everyone.
Zhao Lan, as a Chinese international student in the United States, is living a very specific experience. But the microaggressions she faces because of her accent, her complicated relationship with a host sibling who shares some of her cultural heritage, and the sense of connection she feels when someone shows genuine curiosity about her language and culture are all experiences that can resonate widely.
Your work blends symbolism with real-world issues, how do you develop that style in your writing and directing process?
As a queer woman of colour, many of the realist conventions and narrative structures I grew up with weren’t made for the stories I want to tell.
Over time, I’ve been drawn to symbolism as a way of expressing experiences that are difficult to articulate directly.
My process often begins with an image just as much as a plot point. I might ask: what if I explore family violence through the image of a volcano, or stage a story about language using only books that transform into landscapes?
Writing those ideas down is just the beginning. I develop them through ongoing collaboration with dramaturgs, actors and designers.
Some of the most exciting moments come when those images evolve in the rehearsal room and take on meanings I hadn’t anticipated.
This piece explores language, cultural expectations and the pressure to assimilate, what conversations are you hoping it will spark with audiences?
I hope audiences can continue conversations about what we leave behind when we try to fit into another culture, and what that looks like in everyday life.
I also hope the play brings more attention to microaggressions people of colour experience. These moments are often subtle and not overtly malicious, which can make them harder to name and address.
I hope Zhao Lan’s experiences encourage audiences to talk about those smaller moments that shape how we see ourselves.
At the same time, I hope the conversation comes from a place of care.
What does it mean to share a language with someone? That could be literal, emotional or cultural. And what does it mean when someone makes the effort to learn yours?
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Cinderella and Frankenstein’s Monster Are Dead?
This is a show for everyone, whether or not you’re familiar with Chinese immigration history in America.
You don’t need to know any Mandarin to follow the story.
We’ve been developing and workshopping this piece for the past two years, and we’re incredibly proud of what it has become.
We hope it encourages you to think differently about stories and tropes you may feel you already know.
We’d love to have you join us in August.
