Peruvian theatre company Ministerio de la Belleza brings together theatre, radio drama and Peruvian criollo music this Friday, Saturday and Sunday
Auditorio de Tenerife presents Cariño malo, by Peruvian theatre company Ministerio de la Belleza, at La Salita this weekend. The award-winning queer melodrama will be performed on Friday 6 and Saturday 7 November at 7.30 pm, and on Sunday 8 November at noon. A post-show discussion with the company will follow Friday’s performance. Tickets cost €8.
A repressive society, secrets from the past and a suitcase full of money are among the ingredients of this tribute to Ibero-American melodrama, which won the Audience Award at the 2026 Cangas International Festival of Comic and Festive Theatre. The evocative power of great classics of Peruvian música criolla is reimagined through a queer lens in a story about the pursuit of independence and the liberation of desire.
Cariño malo combines theatre, radio drama and Peruvian creole music to explore the obscene: that which is supposed to remain unseen but insists on coming to light. Featuring Ray Jesús del Castillo, Diego Salinas and Alejandro Clavier, who also wrote and directed the play, it follows Silvio, a 40-year-old man living under his mother’s control. Determined to lose his virginity and break free from repression, he leaves the family home and finds work on a radio soap opera.
What begins as a quest for sexual emancipation spirals into a frenetic, violent and darkly comic adventure, in which the conventions of melodrama collide with the brutality of repression in a story of desire, guilt and liberation. Cariño malo pays tribute to Ibero-American melodrama, the pleasure of listening and the political power of the voice.
Founded in 2025 and directed by Alejandro Clavier, Ministerio de la Belleza is an international performing arts production company. Inspired by the idea that beauty is the splendour of truth, the company creates opportunities for audiences to come together and share experiences that engage with provocative, timely and relevant questions about how we live coexist in today’s world.
The company’s name is also a nod to Venezuela’s Vice-Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness, established in 2013 under the Maduro government.
Tickets cost €8 (€5 for under-30s) and are available at www.auditoriodetenerife.com, from the box office Monday to Friday, 10.00 am–5.00 pm, and Saturday, 10.00 am–2.00 pm, or by calling 902 317 327 during box-office hours.
La Salita’s next production is Selfi. Being Young in the Society of Spectacle, a community theatre project by Juan Ayala and Miguel Oyarzun featuring young people from Tenerife, on 14 and 15 November.