15.08.2026
Glitcher brings cult horror to Oslo
The Helsinki-based performance collective Glitcher returns to Oslo this September with CULT, a visceral and unsettling exploration of devotion, power and the human desire to belong. The group performs at Vega Scene on 18 and 19 September, inviting audiences into a dark world where faith, fear and manipulation collide.
The Helsinki-based performance collective Glitcher returns to Oslo this September with CULT, a dark and physically charged exploration of devotion, power and the seductive pull of belonging.
The Finnish group will perform at Vega Scene on 18 and 19 September 2026, marking Glitcher’s second guest appearance at the Oslo venue after The Porn Horror Musical in 2024. The performances are part of the company’s collaboration with Danish theatre FÅR302.
In CULT, Glitcher turns its attention to the fascination surrounding religious extremism, manipulation and cults. The production asks what happens when devotion turns into obsession—and what people are prepared to do in the pursuit of power or in the name of belief. Drawing inspiration from cults throughout history, the work examines both the attraction of belonging and the unsettling possibility of losing oneself completely.
For Glitcher, however, CULT is not simply a conventional horror story. The group has developed a theatrical language built around exaggeration, physical intensity and deliberately excessive imagery. In an interview with TINFO, members Josefine Fri, Martin Paul and Emelie Zilliacus describe their approach as an attempt to confront audiences with extreme material rather than reproduce violence in a realistic or comfortable form.
That approach grows out of Glitcher’s wider interest in what happens when theatre becomes a bodily experience. The collective, founded in 2019, has become known for productions that push theatrical conventions towards absurdity, using repetition, exhaustion, horror and excess to make audiences conscious of their own reactions.
The group’s previous Oslo appearance, The Porn Horror Musical, established Glitcher as a deliberately provocative presence on the Nordic performance scene. CULT continues that interest in the relationship between spectacle and the audience, but shifts the focus from pornography to cults, true crime, religious imagery and the psychology of collective belief.
Glitcher has also stressed that provocation is not an end in itself. The collective argues that when a performance pushes an audience towards discomfort, the artists must also take responsibility for the emotions they have generated. Consent and the shared experience between performers and spectators therefore remain central to the work.
For an audience familiar with Glitcher’s previous work, the return to Oslo promises another encounter with the collective’s particular brand of extreme theatre: less an invitation to observe from a safe distance than an attempt to make the audience feel the attraction—and the danger—of being drawn into something together.
TINFO 15 August 2026
Photo: Søren Meisner