Gabriela Munoz

Gabriela Munoz as Greta in Perhaps, Perhaps … Quizas (supplied photo by Andrea Lopez) 

By Elissa Blake

Even in moments of high drama, Mexican actor Gabriela Munoz has found that her audience can’t take her seriously.

“Whatever I find very poetic or very serious, people seem to find very funny,” she says. “Even when I was in London doing Shakespeare, I would come out and before I said anything, everyone would laugh. I was like, ‘c’mon, this is supposed to be serious!’ And it still happens now.”

Which is a good thing. Munoz is now one of Latin America’s leading clown performers and poised to make her Australian debut with her one-woman show, Perhaps, Perhaps … Quizas, at the Old 505 in Newtown. “It’s a mix of all the things that touch my heart,” Munoz says. 

Taking its title from the Cuban pop song made famous by Doris Day, the show is based around a clown character, Greta, who is patiently – and sometimes not so patiently – awaiting the arrival of the love of her life, “the one”.

“Greta was born from the idea of a waiting bride - waiting for a real love, waiting for perfect love,” Munoz explains. “In a culture such as mine, a very Catholic culture, there is a lot of pressure on women to find this one relationship that you have to give everything to and make work.”

Munoz speaks from personal experience. “I was once engaged and it didn’t work out. But I remember that instead of talking and being clear about my own emotions, I was just letting things happen. When the relationship was over, I felt crushed because I had never said what I really felt.”

Post break-up, Munoz asked a friend to take photographs of her sitting in a bridal gown in a room full of clocks. From those images – and others taken of Munoz’s 94-year-old grandmother in the same dress – a character, Greta, began to crystallise.

“I was also reading Dickens’ Great Expectations and the story of Miss Havisham,” Munoz says. “I became fascinated with her and with other women who had their hearts broken, like Maria Callas and Frida Kahlo. They were all big inspirations.”

Munoz instinctively knew that Greta’s story had to be told in something other than words. “I didn’t want her to be an interpretation of my own story. I wanted to make it more universal,” Munoz says. “It’s about loneliness and desires, things you can’t put into language.”

Female clowns are very much in the minority, says Munoz, who trained in the Lecoq method of physical theatre while studying at the London International School of Performing Arts. “When I started, even the teachers I had would say, well, you can be a comedienne as a woman but you can never be a clown because women are the muses that men look up to. You can’t laugh at yourself. I thought, what? That is absolutely wrong. Of course I can laugh at myself.”

More women have devoted themselves to the discipline of clowning since, Munoz says. There are even all-female clown festivals. Munoz has attended a couple of them and isn’t a fan. “I always tell the organisers that I don’t like it. I don’t celebrate feminism in that way. We are saying that women are somehow lesser, and that we can’t see men and women’s work together because it is not at the same level.”

As well as touring the world with Greta, Munoz also performs with Clowns Without Borders, an international non-profit organisation bringing laughter to many of the world’s conflict and natural disaster zones.

Working with a clown colleague from Lebanon, Munoz has performed in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

“That was a turning point in my life,” Munoz says. “Since then it has become a mission. I want to do it forever.

“Whether you are playing for typhoon victims in the Philippines or tsunami victims in Indonesia, there is something about the silence of a clown,” Munoz says. “There is nothing you can say to them. You are just there for them. You are just ‘being’ for the people. In that kind of silence there is companionship. It’s also about learning not to push things or control things. Just accept and be, even if it’s just a very brief encounter that you have.”

Perhaps, Perhaps … Quizas plays at the Old 505 Theatre, Newtown from May 2-13, 2017.

This story was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald on April 27, 2017.