Copla: A Spanish Cabaret

This work was featured at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the summer of 2025 and premiered earlier that year in January at The Other Palace theatre in London. The project received support from the Office for Scientific and Cultural Affairs of the Embassy of Spain in London, as well as from Arts Council England. Copla: A Spanish Cabaret has been awarded the Intercultural Dialogue Prize 2024 and the Intercultural Connections Prize 2025. 

Alejandro Postigo is a theatre artist and academic with a strong interest in musical theatre and cultural exchange. His practice-based PhD, obtained from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2019, explored the intercultural adaptation of Spanish copla songs. His research addresses historical revisionism in Spanish musical theatre and applies theories of translation, queer feminism, and interculturality to his professional practice as a stage creator. His most recent work, supported by Arts Council England, focuses on cultural and linguistic barriers in Anglophone theatre contexts and highlights the artistic contributions of migrants, non-native English speakers, and audible minorities, as demonstrated in his latest show Miss Brexit, created in collaboration with international theatre students from the University of West London (2022–2025). 

Copla: A Spanish Cabaret is a theatrical performance created and performed by Alejandro Postigo, reimagining the Spanish copla musical genre from a queer and intercultural perspective. Through songs, personal storytelling, and visual elements, the cabaret offers an emotional and political journey through Spain’s history, cultural memory, and migrant experience. The show blends melodrama, humor, and emotional honesty, presenting copla as a celebration—a dramatic musical genre that flourished during Franco’s regime and, despite its repressive context, gave voice to marginalized experiences, especially those of women and queer people. Postigo uses this musical legacy to explore themes such as displacement, belonging, queer resilience, and the beauty of being “between worlds.” With live piano and violin accompaniment, audiovisual projections, and costumes inspired by Spanish tradition, the show transforms copla into a vehicle for resistance and personal expression. Postigo shares intimate anecdotes, including his relationship with copla divas, his childhood in Spain, and his life as a queer migrant in the UK, featuring a touching interview with his centenarian grandmother. Copla: A Spanish Cabaret is, in the artist’s own words, a way to translate not only language but also emotion, and to reclaim copla as a deeply relevant political and cultural art form.