Abstracts: Tito Vasconcelos’s 2022 ¿La Ópera…o la Nacha? draws inspiration from Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera (1928) and Nacha Guevara’s musical repertoire. The question mark in the title hints at the seeming incongruity of Brecht and Guevara, figures from vastly different cultural, artistic, and political traditions. Yet by weaving them together, Vasconcelos constructs a tapestry of queer sociality, spatiality, creativity, and persecution in 1970s Mexico City, particularly in La Zona Rosa. As a performed autobiography, the actor situates his own story within a broader landscape of queerness in Mexico, activating an archaeology of erased spaces and an archive of feelings. Focusing on music as a vehicle for memory, this essay leverages geography and urban studies to examine how Vasconcelos uses Brecht to recall La Zona Rosa’s erotic and subversive geographies, and turns to concepts related to queer archives to analyze how Vasconcelos uses Guevara’s songs to express affective attachments, mourning, and resilience.
Christina Baker (Sun,) studied this question.
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