“There’s one thing about wanting to control everything that’s exhausting. When you’re more dedicated you know there are things that are going to happen to you, and when they finally happen, I’m not ashamed. There was a time in my life when I rethought to have the best time I could.” He says the turn of the decade comes with renewal and change but also with growth, identifying what things he doesn’t want more for his life, which impositions or other criteria will set aside to walk lighter. Dalia Gutmann “gives herself to ridicule” – the name of her third book, published in October 2019 – and acknowledges that this is how you live better. And this is a contagious effect. “When one cheers, encourages another,” she says in dialogue with Filo.News, about what was the turning point to create “Cosa de Minas” a show for and for women that did not coincidentally grow on the stageta house with performances over nine uninterrupted years.
Dalia Gutmann, one of the women forerunners of stand-up in Argentina Photo: Press Courtesy
During that nearly decade, the one-person went from a room that had room for a hundred spectators, to exhausting locations in the Maipo, at the Lyceum Comedy and saying goodbye with a last date at the Opera. “This cycle gave me a lot of happiness. I met all of Argentina and some latin American cities (Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Uruguay) thanks to this show. I’ve been acting with my belly until the last minute. I’ve been a mother for a second time,” she reviews what her last nine years were on stage. In addition to being a comedian, she is a broadcaster, host of The Guilt is of Columbus (Comedy Center) and Animadas (on Public TV), published three books by Penguin Random House, Delivered to Ridicule (2015), the adaptation of her one-person Thing of Mines (2018) and I Have Something to Say (2019). On his personal level, he is in a couple with the driver and comedian, Sebastian Wairaich, and they have two children: Kiara and Federico.
Dalia is also a precursor to humor in an industry – as in many others – where many women do not develop – once again on a patriarchal issue. She says she really liked being the funny girl of her friends but as a “half-suffering” teenager. “I became more shy, I was lost with my vocation,” she recalls. Over the years, and as in most cases where we identify that which we are passionate about but that becomes a dilemma because it does not always equal what it can feed us; just as those who don’t want the thing, the stand-up came to stay in their life.
Dalia Gutmann
“I started in the middle stand up that like a hobby because I had a hard time at work at the time that was on a newscast,” he says. “Motherhood also helped me to let go,” she adds, and it becomes inevitable to remember her stint in the AM program: before noon, with Vero Lozano and Leo Montero. “They were fighting me in my most ridiculous side and that’s when I ended up giving up ridicule,” he admits. In her first book, Dalia defines he is a “paper collector”, recounting experiences and anecdotes. When did he start surrendering to ridicule?” I remember a phrase that once said to me a theatre teacher that seems key to me: ‘There’s a moment when you give up on being perfect, so you start to have a better time,’ and that’s where the most genuine thing about each one appears. This thing about missing five for the weight, that you always lack something to be happy, that swells the balls (or ovaries). It’s good to get bored and try to have the best time you can,” he says. And it’s just the starting point for your show.” When I started doing stand up (2004-2005) I always acted in groups of males, where I was the only woman. And there was always that going around, the ‘being the woman of the group’, the one who said the ‘most feminine’ things, this ‘Ay Dalia, let a woman say that…'”” she recalls.
Dalia Gutmann, one of the women forerunners of stand-up in Argentina Photo: Press courtesy in its farewell function
The same was reflected in the way women represented in media and magazines, with themes that varied only from fashion, cuisine and decoration. “Because they were the only subjects we were interested in,” he ironizes. Was there a lack of an anime woman?” All of which led me to do a show to show women from a truer place and to capture those talks I have with my friends, which I didn’t see anywhere but in our privacy. I was interested in making a single person in which we can laugh at the whole world, a world that for a long time we had to hide because ‘you disgust you’ (among other ‘taboo’ topics), not only that it happened to you and that there was no plan B, but that you could not tell. All that was a snowball that I needed to decompress and I used it as a humorous material to share with each other things that happen to us. Sometimes you get the feeling that it happens only to you and it doesn’t. I wanted to convey the things that happen to you because you’re a woman, no matter the look of the other,” she says. On stage and with an energy that few manage, Dalia mocks the complexes, recounts experiences, parodies everyday situations and episodes that marked moments in the lives of many women. Oh, and he throws you a #DaluTips. “Thing of Mines” is a space to laugh at us, accept ourselves and love each other with more love; and if the slump comes, bear it with a good smile.
Therefore, and to continue banking this quarantine, he uploaded his entire one-person to YouTube; fundamentally because “time passes faster when you laugh”.How important is it to laugh at it when you’re in the mood?
It seems to me that to make humor and climb lightly on stage you have to handle an important level of acceptance. It’s weird to humor and want to hide things from your personality. I think the laburo of humor is to highlight those things that others want to hide and disguise. I think women have a harder time showing all that stuff that’s not hereronormative. When I see someone handling a very high level of acceptance, it grabs me between admiration and envy but I feel like I’m doing more and more to get towards it. You are a precursor to stand-up, of humor in an area in which (for patriarchal reasons) many women do not develop so do you feel that way? Do you live it with some responsibility?
I learned it over the years. I used to not take care of the responsibility I had to be in front of a microphone, to speak in front of the audience. Over time, and with some comments made, I also realized that it’s not good to say anything, they hear you and you’re an example. I also learned that it doesn’t matter if I say it’s just funny, but I leave something. What comes to you many times may have to do with identification, what is Dalia’s like as an audience?
As an audience I’m very drinky. Because since I know what it’s like to be up there, I always try to encourage the one who’s doing the show. Sometimes it’s kind of inexplicable which makes you laugh but it makes me very relaxed to see that the one at the top of the stage is being pumped.
Dalia Gutmann with Sebastian Wairaich in her farewell role of “Thing of Mines” Photo: Press Courtesy
And you put a bomb on top of the stage?
90 percent of the time I pass the bomb. Since we are human beings and it is not that one is a robot or a hologram and things happen to you in life and above the stage it can happen that it is not but in general it is a place where I feel very happy. I feel very alive and at this point I need it for my life. It is a show that is designed so that all the time things happen that give you away: if you become bored with one theme, soon another will happen; there are the songs, the screens, the costume changes.
In these years I’ve been encouraged to change things. Some stayed, some I tried them once and they were a piece of paper. I’m very hard-headed, I like to try before I rule out. A lot of times it happens, you finish the show, you think it was really good and actually people didn’t go as happy or the other way around. Anyway, it’s very important for those of us who make humor, to be funny on top of the stage because that or if you’re repeating a letter, it usually transmits a lot. One is sensing the energy that is there and what is changing function to function.
We’re human beings and it’s inevitable that I’ll catch you insecurity, not knowing what’s going to happen that night. But what I learned over the years is that just as you don’t know what’s going to happen to you that night, you can’t do much. I drive it knowing it’s something that doesn’t have to scare me and I have to bank it. There is no state of perfection. That’s a big mistake, sometimes you expect the “ideal moment” to get things done but you waste a lot of time. I learned there’s no ideal situation. ‘I want to go on stage when I’m relaxed’ and no, it’s never going to be perfect to go on stage or do whatever you want to do. This “ideal” issue is a matter that women carry hard because they are embedded within certain sociocultural patterns, the “ideal being” for what? According to what? For whom?
I think that’s what we have a lot to learn about. On a cultural issue, women always carry more demands and few opportunities in the world of work. It seems to me that the biggest challenge we women have is not seeking perfection. Throwing ourselves in the pool without thinking that everything has to be perfect; be more out of charge. I set myself up all the time and I try to invite women to that: to go for what we want without screwing up so much, not to be so persecuted with the physical. It’s not easy because it’s many years of living in a culture where women had to be “feminine,” “flirtatious, ” but you have to start cheering. I find it strange that someone is not a feminist because feminism is equal rights between men and women. I’m not so much semiotics but more of the facts, because someone can say it and in fact nothing to see. I’m a feminist, maybe not militant but yes from my daily life I always try to put a grain of sand so that there is equality. With the feminist outburst in Argentina, did you rethink “Cosa de Minas”?
Feminism completely went through the show. A lot of things I used to say, I started thinking about them a lot. In the production of the show I work a lot with Alejandra Bavera, who is super militant and is part of the association of Argentine Actresses. We have several talks, some of us agree on, some don’t, but we have a lot to learn. All that moves to the stage, the place where I stand to humor. There are things that are hard to explain in words but when you see “Thing of Mines” you realize that it is a place of empowerment, of accepting and wanting more. Playing a little with the theme of your first book, how dedicated are you to ridicule?
When you’re more dedicated you know that there are things that are going to happen to you and when they happen I am not ashamed: I go to a party, my dress breaks and I start squeaking… I already knew it was going to happen to me, situations that can be desperate for others but as I know, I relax. I’m dedicated to giving the note, to say something that needed not be said. It’s a trademark of my whole life.
Dalia Gutmann with Sebastian Wairaich in her farewell role of “Thing of Mines” Photo: Press Courtesy
A few months ago you introduced I have something to say, what does that book mean to you?
It’s a book in which beyond being humorous, I reflect a lot of things that I had to live and learned from. I was recording conversations I have with myself. How do you combine motherhood with your work as an artist?
Yes, it’s a quilombo. I’m going crazy. The truth is that I’m very interested in being a good mother for my children but sometimes it’s hard to want to get rid of what you like, put all your heart into it and in turn fulfill all the tasks that kids need. I get a little crazy but I also feel like it’s a good example for your kids – as long as you’re attentive to what they need – that they see that I drink your laburo.
Dalia Gutmann with Sebastian Wairaich in her farewell role of “Thing of Mines” Photo: Press Courtesy
There is this rather widespread idea of imagining that with Sebastian (Wainraich) they will have assembled a very funny family, in which the humor is never lacking, is it?
It’s a fantasy that I think everyone has because we’re dedicated to this. It’s like imagining an architect doing blueprints all day. We’re a traditional family, but I think my kids are funnier than us. After nine years of doing “Thing of Mines,” and pulling out your third book, are you already thinking about that “something completely new” to follow?
How many emotions put you together. It is rare, it is true that I have been doing the functions uninterrupted for nine years (I always finished them in December and in January I came back). I’m very excited that the new ones are coming up. I feel like encouraging myself to do something completely new. It’s like the backbone of the new show I’m putting together, dreams and/or challenges going forward?
In the future I’d like to write and make a comedy. I had a hard time getting to a year in which I did all the things I like like to run a show on public TV, do a show, take a book, a podcast (it’s also called “I have something to say”). I dream of continuing to encourage myself to do the things I like to do, not lose my enthusiasm. Dalia Gutmann. Driver, broadcaster, actress and comedian. Author of “Delivered to Ridicule,” “Thing of Mines” and “I have something to say.” To spend the quarantine between laughs, stay at home, and because time passes faster when you laugh, you uploaded your entire one-person to YouTube.On this note:
