Copla: A Spanish Cabaret

UK-based theatre company HisPanic presents Copla: A Spanish Cabaret.

Copla, practically unknown abroad, is essential to Spain’s cultural and political history. Copla songs channel the queer and migrant experiences in Spain’s early musicals, hitting all the right notes for gay people who love to laugh and cry to divas and their melodramatic music.

Born in the shadows of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, copla was censored, reshaped and made respectable. But beneath the high glamour and heartbreak, it carried something else: coded queer desire, dangerous longing and stories that couldn’t be spoken aloud.

This show drags them into the spotlight, through English reworkings of classic coplas, sharp storytelling and playful audience moments.

It’s bold. It’s funny. It’s tender when you least expect it.

Part cabaret, part reclamation, the show bridges Spain’s fractured past with the lived experience of building a queer life in the UK.

Get ready to laugh, sing and tap your feet as you step into the subversive, dramatic and unapologetically queer world of Copla!