With “a show where all you have to do is have a good time”, Dahlia Gutman returns to the Maipo theater on Saturdays in January and February at 9:00 p.m. men laugh too. After “Cosa de minas” (2015) and “I have something to say” (2019), the comedian now focuses on those earrings that the anxious woman has or thinks she has, and she shares all her delusion on stage.
The well-designed and acted stereotype has ingredients from Maitena’s “Altered Women” and the kitsch aesthetic of Almodóvar, when he swept away his “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” Dalia speaks with enviable loquacity, dances and runs at the same time, changes costumes and sings, but not before admitting that she does it quite badly. In the hour or so that the show lasts, the segment dedicated to the “different types of ass” starts up loud laughter.
Now she awaits us in her Colegiales studio, with a furious green dress and various outfits of strident colors for the photos. “It’s just that my thing is color,” she says. When we tell her that she is “swollen” dressed in the style of the Madrid designer Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada —queen of ultra-chromatic pop— she makes a gesture and sentences: “I don’t care too much about fashion”.
News: Are you satisfied with this show?
Dahlia Gutman: The truth is that this one-man show allows me to share with people the neurosis that I experience; I’m glad I found a channel to drain it. But it happens to me that there are days that I leave happy and others a little anguished…
News: Written and scripted by you.
Gutman: Yes. The stand up has that one is the author, because no one better to act what lives. I began to connect with the world of theater, which is different because it is more than one with a microphone. In fact, I am directed by Mariela Asensio, who is a great playwright. I’m getting encouraged to sing, I love the physical, although I don’t have the energy of before and I have to rest at different times. And the public is the co-author, because with their silence or their laughter I am calibrating. I also have feedback from people like Mariela. I record what occurs to me with my cell phone, on the subway, at a quinceanera party.
News: He said that it is a show told by a normal woman, with a normal body, that normal things happen to her and that makes it different… “Normal” is a term that is attacked today because it would not be inclusive. Who can say that something is normal? What is your opinion of inclusive language?
Gutman: I don’t get so caught up in those things. It will be because I feel more like a mine from the street than from the show. I said it in the sense that I am not Pampita or Moria. They show up as stars. I am more everyday. I don’t have a very different life from ordinary people, but I dared to get on stage. And it seems stupid to me that it bothers someone that someone speaks inclusively.
News: From the stage she talks about enjoyment, the perfect but impossible living standards, the guilt, the relationship with her body, the complex and passionate bond with her mother and her daughter, the experience of being a woman and that endless list of things to do. We live stepping on the accelerator to the full.
Gutman: I am a mine from the last century, like you and many others, who are living in the XXI. Before, to go buy a jean, you went to look for it, you tried it on… now in one click it comes to your house. Also, there is no stipulated time; if I want, I watch a movie at three in the morning. This generates anxiety, because all the time you could be doing what you are not doing. It is not only one’s own speed, but also the world’s. Guys use the term “fomo” which means you are missing something because there is so much! It is a time marked by this.
News: Did you split up with Sebastián (Wainraich) a couple of years ago?
Gutmann: No, I never separated. We do not live in separate houses. We have two children Kiara (15) and Federico (10). I don’t know why they think so.
News: You said it in the program hosted by Flor Peña, La puta ama; that they had separated, that they got along 6 minutes a week, that he was looking for real estate to move.
Gutman: No. I love him, he is the father of my children, we have lived together since 2002. This was a humorous topic. It was a joke that I shot very badly and was taken literally. Yesterday the four of us went out, we went to see Fuerza Bruta and people must think, look at how well these exes get along!
News: I heard that for you monogamy is untenable. Does it justify infidelity?
Gutmann: I couldn’t be unfaithful because I’m guilty and I have a very focused libido on my work and on raising my children. It doesn’t give me the schedule! Whoever can do it and understands that by having adventures he is not stopping loving his partner, let him do it.
News: So coexistence works for them.
Gutman: Coexistence lasts because we both have creative jobs and we are independent. We have a healthy bond. We all need a space. We are always looking for ways to bond better.
News: In 2015, a lump was touched in one breast. The biopsy indicated that it was malignant, they operated on her, she followed the medical instructions and she overcame the disease. How did you go through that cancer psychologically?
Gutman: I was working in Peru and I discovered the little ball. I took the plane and flew to see my gynecologist. I lived through the process of what it is like to have a tumor in my body, they operated on me twice. I never took it with that why me? Of course I had the thought that I could die. When they anesthetized me, the second time, I remember that he told me I have boys, a life, many things to do… and I cried. We are finite, I try to accept that but that I don’t close myself off, but on the contrary, to open myself up.
News: She was a tutor, telephone operator and waitress, when she entered the artistic milieu she did it as an announcer. Did she always have a job?
Gutmann: I realized that what is going is to generate work. I always thought about what can occur to me, before sending a resume. I realized that if I gave ball to my occurrences it was better for me.
News: Any work project?
Gutman: I premiered “Como te soñé”, a play by Esther Goris that she also directs, with Ezequiel Campa at the Chacarerean Teatre. I’m going to see how I bank that there are no laughs. It is something new in my life, I encourage another record.
News: How do you deal with money?
Gutman: I have a good bond. I’m not guilty of earning money and I don’t have luxuries. I’m not interested in a million-dollar portfolio. I prefer to go to dinner with my daughter, to go to the movies with my son.
News: What do you think of this critical moment in our economy?
Gutmann: What I see is ferocious inequality and total disorganization. Distributing better is a matter of will. That bloody thing with money and corruption, they kill me. I’m worried about the white glove stream. I am outraged by the one who has the power to distribute as he corresponds and does not do it.
