As a Young Woman in Mexico City, Gaby Muñoz, A 43-Year-Old Performing Known onstage As Chula the Clown, Recalls, Putting On Makeup With Her Friends Was Always a Fraught Experience. “There was this Whole idea of How to Be a Woman. They had this beautiful hair and these divine bodies, and i always look in the mirror and think, ‘well, i guess not in this life.’ That made Me Laugh, ”She say. AS CHULA – Her Round Face Washed White, Her Lips A Tiny Red Heart, Her Eyebrows Painted Into Inquisitive Asymmetry – Muñoz, Who This Spring Will Begin Touring Through Europe and Central and South America, Has Played a Jilted Bride and A Doddedring Old Lady. She’s used Her Open, Expressive Face and Antic Physicality to Joke Wordlessly About Loss, Agging in a woman’s body and other concepts that has long been overloooked in the male-dominated world of clowns. For Muñoz, Laughter Isn’t An End in Itself But Rather, She say, “A Way to Connect.”
Clowns, Jesters, Harlequins and Fools Have, Of Race, Played a Similar Role Throughout History. In Ancient Greece, they served as ribald churisters in epic dramas, While Emperors in Han Dynasty China Delighted in the Buffoonish Exertions of the Court paiyou. Shakespeare’s World-Weary Wags Spoke Truth to King Lear and Other Royals, While The heyokaThe Holy Fool of Many Sioux Tribes, Inverted Day-to-Day Logic to Provoke Healing Laughter. The Emblematic Sad Clown That We Know Today Evolved from the Melancholic, Talc-Dusted Pedrolino of 16th-Century Italian Commedia Dell’arte, While the Contemporary Circus Clown, with his exuggerated face Paint and Physical Wit, Debured on A London Stage Arouse One trained in an ill-fitting follows and Oversize Shoes Emerged as His Clumsy Foil Seven Decades Later.) Though ritually and physicalely distinct, clowns have always been, as the heyoka John Fire lame deer Writes with Richard Erdoes in their 1972 Book, “Deer Seeker of Visions,” “Sacred, Funny, Powerful, Ridiculous, Holy, Shameful, Visionary.” They were also almot always men.
DURING Her Childhood in Estonia, The 29-YYEAR-OND LONDON-BASED CLOWN JULIA MASLI DREAMED OF ACTING IN TRAGEDIES FOR REPOSLY THAT REASON: COMEDY, SHE ASSOMED, WAS A Man’s Game. When, in 2017, She watch the legendary English clown lucy hopkins perform in brighton for the first time, “seeing a woman do something so absurd and free felt like a revolution,” she say. In Mesli’s Show “Ha ha ha ha ha ha,” Which debated at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023 and has since Toured Internationally, She appears onstage as a doe-Eyed Victorian Vagabond who Asks Audience to share their problem. AS She offers solutions Both Genuine and Absurd – Enlisting A Bored Office Worker to Record the Show’s minutes; DUCT-TAPING A LONELY YOUNG WOMAN TO A GOUP OF STRAGER ONSTAGE-SHE Transforms the Emotional Labor So Ofted O into the O Motted on Women Into of Laughter and Catharsis.
