Pleasurable and Perilous Rebellions in ProyectoTEATRO’s Cabarex 2: RevoLUZiones

When it lives on the body, history can manifest excessive contradictions that cannot be written down. A written account of the last five hundred years of Latin American history may be able to embrace paradoxes: dictators promised liberation to the people who they then subjugated, and women saved liberators who then overshadowed them. But would a textbook ever allow itself to be as funny, as sexy, and as messy as history is before it is captured by the written word? ProyectoTEATRO’s Cabarex 2: RevoLUZiones says the answer is “no.”

What kinds of histories of queer longing and resistance might we know if they were all sung through Erika Santana’s silver throat and her black-lace-covered body as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz? Or what kind of dictator figures might we remember if we were introduced to them through the bravado (and humor) Ariel Blanco uses to perform Simón Bolívar with a jacket, boots, and tighty-whities? How might Manifest Destiny be understood if it were taught in schools through John Gast’s infamous painting and Luis Ordaz’s skirted, bare-chested dance crowned by a rat mask?

The show is the middle installment of a trilogy originally presented in Austin, Texas. As a set, the trilogy explores the past, present, and future of Latinx culture and history through devised cabaret. The shows in Austin included Cabarex 1: Orígenes (September 2023), an earlier version of Cabarex 2: RevoLUZiones (January 2024), and the final Cabarex 3: Futurx (May-June 2024). I had the pleasure of witnessing Cabarex 1: Origenes on opening night, and I was spellbound. The opening number, a homage to Walter Mercado’s astrological readings performed raucously by drag astrologer Vida Santina, was lighting in a bottle. Those who grew up with Walter on the TV screen understood the reference, but everyone else was in on the silliness and sexiness of Vida reading tarot cards as she moved through the energies that created the cosmos (and Latin America, presumably). Cabarex 1 was thus an exploration of Latin America from its “origins” (cosmic, astrological, and historical) through early independence. It was performed comically, athletically, and sumptuously by its large cast, supported by creative music choices (the Netflix “tu-dum” was sampled and turned into a song-and-dance number).The show and company are an important mainstay in an Austin and United States theatre landscape that regularly ignores Latinx artists. After opening night, I was hooked and returned to see the show twice more, even helping them strike it.

In structure, dramaturgical texture, and raucousness, Cabarex 1 and Cabarex 2 have much in common. I attended a performance of Cabarex 2 as part of Encuentro 2024—A National Theatre Festival. It was one of nineteen performances from groups across the United States and Puerto Rico, “desde San José [California] hasta San Juan [Puerto Rico].” Latino Theater Company handpicked eighteen shows, and they ran in repertory at the Los Angeles Theater Center for three weeks. Audiences could attend a single show or purchase a festival pass, and the festival comprised workshops, devising original performance sessions, and talkbacks with each company. Though I only watched Cabarex 1 in Austin, my understanding is that Cabarex 2 morphed as it moved from Texas to California. It also continued to morph throughout the run as the show struggled (and perhaps refused?) to conform to the ninety-minute limit Encuentro set on most of the shows.

How many parts of our history and present are worth remembering when time is one of the finite resources capitalism endlessly extracts from us?

What is the show “about”? Where to begin?! Cabarex 2 relentlessly undresses the histories of Latin America through the eyes of women whose contributions have been overshadowed by stories of men that predominate in the textbooks that my generation learned from in Latin America. This is primarily embodied in the story of Manuelita Saénz (played by Santana), “Libertadora del libertador,” who was overshadowed by Simón Bolívar (played by Blanco), but it extends through Soldaderas that fought in the Mexican Revolution, the intellectual contributions of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Manifest Destiny, nineteenth and twentieth-century dictators, Carmen Miranda, the introduction of railways and electricity, and the plight of immigrants in the United States. The show takes on a feminist angle by uplifting these women’s literal voices, even as it pushes them through a pop-culture filter, as many of these scenes are covers of pop songs and musicals.

Cabarex 2 is also fastidiously queer. Every member of the cast, in each of their dozens of costumes, has extensive make-up. Rafael Trujillo, Fidel Castro, Augusto Pinochet, Emiliano Zapata, and Pancho Villa all don the same amount of contour, lipstick, and lashes as Manuelita, the nuns, Las Soldaderas, Dora the Explorer, and the allegorical Mamá Europa. Having seen the multiple costume racks in the Latino Theatre Company costume shop, it struck me that the make-up was the one element that remained constant. It is, of course, a practical choice. Some performers mentioned they spent well over an hour applying it, and in a show like this, there is precious little time for a quick change, let alone a makeover. But the consistent make-up looks also have a dramaturgical implication: seeing figures of masculinity (dictators, especially) and femininity (the nuns, the soldaderas) wearing this make-up offered the audience the opportunity to wonder: might all of these clothes actually have been exaggerated forms of gendering? It is hard to imagine a resolute “no” to that question, but once again, history as present in the body is much messier (and more interesting) than in a textbook. In other words, I would not have stopped to think about the real Trujillo’s eyelashes were it not for Cabarex 2.

As a result of this irreverence and the cast’s charm, the atmosphere in the room (and around it) was pure electricity.

Dynamic and rebellious as the show is, its morphing structure is always animated by a similar question: What will we do with the stories about our past? What are we to do about the institutions that those stories nurture? What kind of future can we make by creatively rearranging the present? Regardless of the latest upturn in censorship in schools or the fear of offending someone in conversation, maybe these are the questions we should all be asking ourselves. Perhaps the question I would add to that set is: how many parts of our history and present are worth remembering when time is one of the finite resources capitalism endlessly extracts from us?

ProyectoTEATRO stages a show that is as pleasurable (Sor Juana and the nuns enjoyed themselves to the tune of a famous song about feeling good) as it is cheeky (I was given condoms after correctly answering a question about Latin American geography). It is rough-around-the-edges (it started and often ended late) as it is precise (Irving Maldonado’s Carmen Miranda was both charming and robotic), deeply concerned with the future of the Latinx community (there’s a vulnerable scene with undressed migrants) while being somewhat irreverent even of the norms of a prominent Latinx institution (during their second performance at Encuentro, an actor made a passing comment that they needed to stick to the ninety minutes, lest they be kicked out of the festival).

As a result of this irreverence and the cast’s charm, the atmosphere in the room (and around it) was pure electricity. The cast, which included Santana, Blanco, and Ordaz, but also Joty Collet, Norma Sánchez Varela, Güicha Gutiérrez, Olivia B. Rodriguez, Valeria Smeke, Isis Silva, Gabe Torres, Chukki Maldonado, and Raquel Rivera, was incredibly generous in their bursts of energy: Rodriguez’s zapateado was as powerful as Silva’s singing and Sánchez Varela’s comedic timing. The cast’s mouths, arms, legs, skin, hair, and eyes exuded “entrega” (surrender, delivery, or devotion) on the stage, all well-furnished by Raquel Rivera’s luscious (but not overdone) make-up and wigs and Güicha Gutiérrez’s chameleonic costume plot. The night I saw it, I felt the sensual pleasure and the political attunement of the company, and I was not alone. As the cast of multi-hyphenate artists acted, sung, queered, dragged, kissed, stomped, danced, laughed, interviewed, undressed, satirized, and ultimately re-membered five hundred years of Latin American history, they made a case for why history always lives uniquely in our bodies.