Queer Screams turns horror into a queer cabaret at Les Riches-Claires

From 20 May to 5 June 2026, Les Riches-Claires hosts Queer Screams, a drag, circus and puppetry cabaret that dives into the strange overlap between LGBTQIA+ history and the horror genre. The show asks why queer culture has so often been linked to monsters, darkness and transformation, and it does so with equal parts camp, frisson and playful subversion.

Why are there so many lesbian vampires? Is the werewolf a coming-out metaphor? Could Frankenstein’s creature be read as trans? And did the HIV crisis fuel a new fear of leather-clad creatures of the night? Those are the questions driving Queer Screams, a show that uses horror not just as style, but as a lens on desire, stigma and community.

A haunted house of identities

The show invites audiences into a nocturnal manor populated by eccentric figures, each embodying a different queer-monster archetype. Master Baxter, a 500-year-old master of ceremonies, guides the audience through the story; Carmilla, a 153-year-old “woke vampire,” acts as a guide for baby monsters in existential crisis; and Loufti, the werewolf in search of transformation, navigates the awkwardness of coming out to his family.

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The cast also includes Frankie, a non-binary Frankenstein’s creature struggling with body horror and self-discovery, and The Thing, a shy closet monster hoping to escape the shadows. Together, they build a world where terror becomes a language for identity, and where the grotesque is reclaimed as a site of possibility rather than shame.

Horror as queer history

What makes Queer Screams especially interesting is the way it connects classic monster imagery to the history of queer representation. Horror has long been a genre of coded difference, and the show leans into that legacy by asking how fear has been projected onto bodies, desires and communities that society has tried to keep at the margins.

That makes the piece feel especially relevant for a queer audience in Brussels, where cabaret, drag and performance art continue to be important tools for both pleasure and political expression. By mixing circus, marionettes and drag, the production embraces theatrical excess while keeping its focus on what it means to live, desire and transform under the gaze of normativity.

Practical details

Queer Screams runs at Les Riches-Claires, 24 Rue des Riches-Claires, 1000 Brussels, from 20 May to 5 June 2026. The venue’s official site presents the piece as a “drag horror cabaret” led by Elf Sadow, and the event is also listed on Brussels cultural agendas with the same dates.

More information is available on the official Les Riches-Claires page and the Brussels event listing.

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