For people who believe that creative drag started with Ru Paul, they are so wrong, as they obviously haven’t met the totally fabulous ASTRID HADAD. She is a dazzling, brilliant cabaret star who is totally over the top in every sense of the word: from her make-up to her outrageous costumes, she is the ultimate purveyor of camp. Her performances are laced with irony, cynicism and wicked wit and have earned her the title the Lady Gaga of Mexico
Born in 1957 to Lebanese parents in Chetumal, Quintano Roo, her breakthrough role as a performer was in 1984 in Jesusa Rodríguez’s production of “Dona Giovanni.” She then began performing in nightclub cabaret, her performances interwoven with folklore that pays homage to Mexican culture while simultaneously skewering it. Her style is influenced by revues, the theatrical entertainment also known as the “low-class genre.” Popular in the first four decades of the 20th century, revues served as a “stage newspaper” to inform people on current events and criticism and were the most important disseminator of music and popular culture.
Hadad’s dramatic eye makeup draws on German Expressionism and the movies she watched as a young girl. She learned to apply makeup in drama school; with small eyes and a small face, she decided she needed the dramatic eye makeup to be seen in the back row of the theater. After trying it out the first time, she decided it would become her onstage trademark.
Throughout her more than four-decade career, she has supported the LGBTQ+ community. She loves them, and they love her right back. Drag queens imitate her — she admires them as many have surpassed her with their costumes and makeup — and some people believe Hadad herself is a drag queen, which amuses her to no end.
Now she is about to appear in Miami in La Pluma o La Espada . The common thread of the show is woven by the lives’ crusades of two women, one born in Spain, the other in Mexico, both locked up in a convent but going to twist their destinies in opposite ways: one with the pen, the other with the sword, one is the Nun Alférez and the other Sor Juana. The two most famous women in Spain and New Spain of the Baroque era.
|
La Pluma o La Espada by Astrid Hadad (Mexico) Westchester Cultural Arts Center Saturday April 18, 2026 / 8:00 p.m. |
Leave a Reply