The romantic music of various Spanish-speaking artists as far back as the 1960s is popular again… now these songs fuel the nightlife of Costa Rica in the early 2010’s. Plancha, as the genre was later called, revived the nostalgic music that our mothers and grandmothers listened to while doing housework (música de plancha literally translates into ‘music for ironing clothes’). The songs are full of theatricality, often celebrating the fantasy and suffering of romantic love, closely linked to telenovela culture and to the art of transformistas (drag queens). Fifty years later, plancha became an emotional oasis for the younger playo community of the capital, serving as the joyous soundtrack to a celebration of playo identities. 

Over de maker
With his debut project El cantar del playo… (‘the singing of the faggot’), Mario Barrantes Espinoza transforms the stage into a landscape of memories. A place where melodrama, songs and visual poems invoke his personal explorations of queer sexuality and identity, from the perspective of a Central American migrant in Europe.