El cantar del playo or... a song is a rose is a thorn

In ‘El cantar del playo or... a song is a rose is a thorn’, Mario Barrantes Espinoza revisits the gay night scene in Costa Rica of the early 2010s, the years in which the music genre plancha popularized. Plancha contains a wide variety of styles with songs that have lyrics about love and heartbreak in common. The songs are full of theatricality, often celebrating the fantasy and suffering of romantic love. As a genre, it is closely linked to the telenovela culture as well as the art of the transformistas (drag queens).

‘El cantar del playo or... a song is a rose is a thorn’ can be imagined as a songbook with a collection of plancha songs drawn from Espinoza's own experiences in the gay scene of Costa Rica at that time. Through melodrama and poetic storytelling, he'll be reincarnating that period in time on stage. He won’t be the only one to perform: sound, lights, costumes and texts will act as autonomous elements creating a multimedia performance where choreography meets poetry.

As part of 10x10, a collaboration between LOD music theatre and Kunstencentrum Voo?uit.