Astrid Hadad (born 1957) is a Mexican vocalist and performer, mostly known for her irreverent political cabaret performances where she uses her own body as the scenic stage for all the symbols of Mexicanness and excessive femininity through her costuming. Hadad was born in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico and currently lives in Mexico City. Of Mayan and Lebanese heritage, growing up near the Belize border and able to hear Caribbean radio stations coming from Cuba, has been hugely influential for her heterogenous perspective on social and cultural national life. Coupled with that, her incessant desire to critique the powers that be, her background as a political science major in college, her ongoing explorations in non-traditional theatrical forms, is all that fuels Hadad's unique political cabaret performances. As Roselyn Constantino has written, "[o]ut of Hadad´s meditations on the multiplicity of influences shaping her and other Mexican's sense of themselves, and on the violence implicity in that process, emerge performances featuring a fast-paced, fragmented, parodic unveiling of traditional Mexican song, dress, and dance. Hadad avails herself of the humorous sociopolitical criticism of cabaret, carpa, and teatro de revista--important theatrical styles in Mexican cultural history." Education Before moving to Mexico City to attend the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Theatre School (Centro Universitario de Teatro), Hadad was enrolled at the Universidad Veracruzana were she was a political science and journalism major. Early career After appearing in a number of theatrical shows, she came to the fore in 1985 in Donna Giovanni, an all-female adaptation of Mozart's opera, which was directed by Jesusa Rodríguez and became a great hit in Europe. It closed after its 500th performance, in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Also in the 1980's, a major television appearance was her role as Margarita in the Televisa produced telenovela Teresa (1989), which starred fellow Mexican Lebanese actor Salma Hayek. And, in the early 1990's Hadad was cast in the role of Teresa de Teresa in Alfonso Cuarón's first full-feature film, Sólo con tu pareja (Only With Your Partner), a film that, although light-hearted and comedic, includes AIDS in its story, something not openly discussed in the Mexican public sphere at that time. This multi-faceted set of experiences, coupled with Hadad's desire to interpret popular songs from the Latin American / Mexican songbook in her own particular way, led to her explorations of (political) cabaret. Early political cabaret performances and