FML

A part of the Fresh Fruit Theater Festival hosted by The Wild Project, Xandra ibarra aka La Chica Boom is pleased to share an original work titled F*ck My Life (FML). FML tells the riveting backstory and failure of Xandra Ibarra’s burlesque persona La Chica Boom. Using evocative sound montage, critical political imagery, and fast paced physical theatrics, FML chronicles Ibarra’s early ambition to use burlesque “spictacles” to undermine her audience’s Mexiphobic gaze. With astute direction from Evan Johnson, Ibarra reveals not only her tasseled pasties, as is traditional in burlesque, but also her incompatible relationship with her interracial audience and the emotional toll that her perverse-cum-filled-minstrel-spectacles have had over the past ten years of her burlesque life. By juxtaposing her story with the rumored death of Hollywood’s “Mexican Spitfire” Lupe Velez, who purportedly died with her head in the toilet, La Chica Boom foreshadows the destiny of her burlesque persona. While Ibarra doesn’t resolve the show with death as Lupe did, she proposes to live the afterlife of La Chica Boom as a cockroach: reviled and untamable.