What question did this study set out to answer?

This work explores the interplay between queer identity and urban space in Mexico City by analyzing a teatro-cabaret performance.

May 16, 2026

Affective Archives and Queer Space in Mexico City: Bertolt Brecht, Nacha Guevara, and Tito Vasconcelos’s teatro-cabaret

Key Points

This work explores the interplay between queer identity and urban space in Mexico City by analyzing a teatro-cabaret performance.
Analyzed Tito Vasconcelos’s ¿La Ópera…o la Nacha? performance and its influences from Brecht and Guevara.
Utilized concepts from urban studies and geography to assess queer spatiality and emotional archives.
Investigated the role of music as a means to evoke memory and affective connections within queer communities.
Vasconcelos connects different cultural traditions, revealing a complex tapestry of queer history in La Zona Rosa.
The performance illustrates how music serves as a conduit for expressing resilience and mourning in queer spaces.
The exploration of erased spaces highlights the rich emotional landscape of queerness in 1970s Mexico City.

Abstract

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.

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