“I DON’T DO PLOT, I DO IDEOLOGY”

In a 2015 interview with Jennifer Ponce de León, Ricardo Bracho discusses the intellectual, political, and aesthetic influences shaping his work. He outlines key elements of his biography, including growing up in a communist household in Los Angeles, working with Cherríe Moraga at UC Berkeley, getting involved in antiwar and AIDS-related activism in the San Francisco Bay area, and living and working in New York City. While emphasizing his commitment to Marxism, internationalism, and anticolonial traditions, Bracho rejects identity-based politics, including Chicano nationalism, and critiques the neoliberal co-optation of queer politics. Bracho and Ponce de León discuss how Bracho’s plays explore the interplay of revolutionary thought, popular culture, and libidinal desire, challenging bourgeois norms and cultural nationalism. Bracho reflects on his engagement with theater as a collaborative medium, while critiquing its institutional constraints in the United States.