The Mexican Husband

An adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s one-act play The Jewish Wife (1937), Carranza’s version follows an undocumented man’s last night, at home with his spouse in Los Angeles, before leaving for the border to avoid deportation.

The original play from which Carranza’s work is adapted comes, is part of a series of playlets Bertolt Brecht wrote in the 1930s, which were later compiled under the title Fear and Misery of the Third Reich. These short plays employ techniques of epic theatre in a deadpan critique antisemitism in Nazi Germany.

Fabiola Carranza’s art and writing examine visual, cultural, and personal phenomena. She is an art-practice concentration PhD student specializing in Critical Gender Studies at UC San Diego. Carranza has participated in exhibitions at Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg), the National Gallery of Costa Rica (San José) and the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver). Her first public art commission, Seven Signs, was on view at Waterfront Park in Seattle in 2016, and her first play The Mexican Husband was published by Blank Cheque Press in 2019.