We sat down for a quick chat with Alejandro Postigo ahead of their new project, Copla: A Spanish Cabaret
1. For those unfamiliar, how would you describe Copla—and why does it still resonate so powerfully today?
Copla is a deeply dramatic Spanish song tradition rooted in the 20th century, full of yearning, passion, and coded resistance. The songs often tell intense, emotionally saturated stories of heartbreak, betrayal, exile, or forbidden desire — sung in a heightened, almost operatic style. Think of it as Spain’s answer to the torch song, but steeped in folklore and political repression.
It resonates today because at its core, Copla is about not belonging, about being misunderstood, rejected, or displaced. That emotional landscape is still so relevant for anyone who’s queer, migrant, or navigating multiple identities. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, the music grabs you by the gut. It’s raw, theatrical, and deeply human.
2. How does queerness intersect with your interpretation of this traditionally conservative musical form?
Queerness lives in the margins of Copla — always present, never spoken. The songs are full of dramatic female voices surviving impossible love, societal judgement, exile… all themes that queer people recognise instantly. In the past, queer fans saw themselves reflected in these tragic heroines.
In Copla: A Spanish Cabaret, I bring that queerness to the surface. I reclaim the songs not just as nostalgic pieces, but as radical acts of self-expression. Performing Copla in drag, in English, as a queer migrant artist becomes an act of resistance. It says: this music is also mine — and it was always ours.
3. What emotional truths did you want to bring forward in reimagining these songs for a modern, international audience?
I wanted to highlight the emotional paradox at the heart of Copla: deep pain expressed with joy and flair. There’s something incredibly honest about how these songs embrace melodrama without irony. In reimagining them, I wanted to show that these truths — longing, loneliness, pride, shame, resilience — transcend time and culture.
Many of us live in-between things: languages, countries, families, identities. Copla gives voice to that liminality. My goal was to make audiences feel seen, even if they’ve never heard the word “Copla” before. It’s about making emotional legacies visible and valid.
4. How does performing Copla at the Edinburgh Fringe, surrounded by such diverse voices, amplify its message of cultural pride and personal longing?
The Fringe is a giant constellation of stories. To bring Copla there is to say: this too belongs. My show exists in conversation with other voices — queer, migrant, hybrid, and defiant — and that’s what makes it powerful.
The festival allows me to step outside of traditional “niche” programming and say: look, this is queer, migrant, musical, and Spanish — and still entirely universal. That act of sharing Copla with a broader, diverse audience helps dismantle the idea that only certain kinds of stories deserve global visibility.
5. What challenges or joys did you encounter translating the soul of Spanish Copla into a new, multilingual theatrical language?
Translation is never just about words — it’s about capturing rhythm, nuance, cultural context, emotional tone. The biggest challenge was making sure that nothing got lost in translation, especially for audiences who’ve never heard Copla before.
But there was real joy in the process too. I found that translating the songs into English made their metaphors hit differently — sometimes more sharply, sometimes more tenderly. It forced me to live inside the songs in a new way, and to reimagine them as something both true to their origins and alive in the present.
6. If Copla had a signature dish instead of a signature song, what would it be—rich, layered, a little dramatic, and definitely served with flair?
Maybe, tortilla de patatas con drama. Warm, comforting, deceptively simple on the surface — but once you cut into it, it’s complex, messy, and oh-so-satisfying. It’s the dish that looks like home but carries the weight of memory and tension in every bite.
And of course, it’s served dramatically — maybe on vintage Spanish china, with a flourish, a fan, and a monologue about how your lover left you for someone who can’t even cook.