Introducing Luz Gaxiola

One of the most iconic photos of Luz is from a 2015 tour to Lesvos Greece. A young girl and the clowns are bouncing on a rubber life raft, transforming it into a trampoline. The girl’s face is partially covered by her hair, but her wide smile peeks through. Luz is holding her accordion, also grinning. The photo does not show that the girl, a Syrian refugee, was still damp from crossing the Mytilini Strait. The photo does not show the girl’s loss, fear, or the uncertainty of her future. The photo shows her resilience. The photo shows her laughter.

Here’s a chance to get to know Luz a little better.

Do you wear a nose when you perform?

I love wearing a clown nose. For people who are culturally familiar with clowning, they see the red nose and it is a signal:  That’s a clown, it’s time to play! 

But I don’t always wear a red nose, especially if I dont’ know much about the situation where I’m performing or if I know I’ll be up close and will need to make a soft approach. Not everyone is ready to get into wacky play immediately. Sometimes not having a red nose leads to more flexibility to start with a gentle connection.

What is your favorite clown prop?

My accordion

You can hear the accordion before you see the clown. It evokes a mood and a feeling. A musical instrument is the most efficient way to establish a world.

Traveling with the accordion: you’ve got to really want to do it. It’s heavy and it’s delicate. It is definitely hard and sometimes annoying to travel with, but the accordion’s sound is so full and it’s such a big presence that it’s worth it.

The other cool thing about the accordion is that can take you where you need to go. If you show up with an accordion, someone will say, “Hey you with the accordion, come over here.” It’s like an entrance ticket. 

What’s a favorite memory from working with CWB?

One night in Lesvos, I went on a walk to the beach. Our day of work was done, we had done three shows. I was just going to the beach by myself to play the accordion and relax. When I got there, rubber boats were landing. It was about sixty people arriving. This was it, their moment of landing. There were a ton of people, and it was a really quiet, delicate moment. I didn’t play the accordion. In that moment, it didn’t feel right. After everyone was safely off the liferafts and on the beach, people from a Norwegian NGO sprung into action getting people water to drink. I heard them talking making calls to set up bus transport to pick up everyone from the beach and take them to a refugee camp.

All of a sudden, there was a lot of people by the street, standing around and waiting for the bus. I thought, “this is the moment for the accordion.” So I walked up with the accordion and people flipped out. They demanded I play and we had a dance party on the street. A lot of the people there were from Afghanistan, and some asked me if I knew any Afghani music, which unfortunately I didn’t. So they showed me Afghani folk dances set to Mexican music, Italian tunes, and whatever else I played on the accordion. There was a great feeling of relief, they had just completed the most dangerous part of their journey and it was time to celebrate. They still had a long way to go but arriving safely in Greece was a major milestone. I stayed with them for about an hour until the buses picked up the last people waiting. I don’t have any pictures, there is no official Clowns Without Borders documentation, but I think about that night all the time. It started as a moment that wasn’t right for play, and then it became the perfect moment for play. 

There was a woman who stood next to me while I was played, dancing with me and egging me on. She was about my age, and we connected. It was like we were instant best friends. A few days later, I saw her at the Moria camp and we hugged tightly. I think of her often and wonder where she is now.

What are you currently working on?

I’m really excited about developing a collection of acts that are ready for any circumstances, any weather. I want to make some rain-ready shows. So that’s my project, offroad, all-weather clowning!

What’s something you learned from another CWB artist?

I learned a lot working with Sabine. Sometimes people think we are diminishing someone’s situation by being silly. Sabine really helped me to see firsthand that it’s actually the opposite. Choosing to be silly can be an amazingly empowering decision for people living in stressful circumstances. It is a form of defiance to choose to engage in play, and Sabine was so good at showing that. 

No Comedy Without Conflict?

One of the great joys of physical comedy is watching a fight unfold. Clowns are relatable because they wear their heart on their sleeve, much as a toddler might go from laughter, to shock, to tears, and back to laughter. What may start with one clown mistakenly taking the other’s suitcase can escalate into an all-out brawl.

Clowns Without Borders shows come together very quickly, so we rely on easily accessible, common vocabulary. As a performer, I love slapstick. It’s a nearly universal clown language, and I have so much fun getting carried away in the absurdity of a clown fight. But when clowning in conflict zones, some of the familiar slapstick tropes lose their charm. For communities experiencing acute or generational violence, a punch is not a punchline—it’s an exhausting reality.

Is It Safe?

I noticed this firsthand in Myanmar. CWB – USA toured in partnership with Mines Advisory Group, and part of the show contained safety messages about explosives. Our ideas for the show had to be approved, and also needed to uphold the educational messaging. We couldn’t add anything to the show that made mines look fun, or showed us playing with a mine. Nor could we add anything that made light of an explosion or injury.

This meant that a lot of our initial ideas were cut. One was to pretend the diavalo was a mine and play a comedic game of “hot potato.” Of course, this meant the clowns would have to touch “a mine,” which went directly against the safety message. Ditto for the idea of a ball rolling into an unsafe area, and the clowns using acrobatics to get it back. Finally, after a lot of trial and a lot of error, we found a story that worked: The clowns are arriving in a new place and learning about what’s safe for that area.

Is It Funny?

As we learned about the real-life consequences of living with land mine contamination, it felt considerably less fun to create violence or aggression in the show. In response, we shifted some of the slapstick moments. Instead of overt clown conflict, our conflict was accidental (mostly). This meant that when Andres took a bow, he would accidentally hit Leah and me. Instead of pulling Leah’s pants down, they would fall off “accidentally” as she jumped rope. We decided that it was more fun to be clumsy (very, very clumsy) than overtly violent.

The most violent part of the show was when Leah stole my newspaper. This results in a tug of war, but Leah gets so carried away that she continues the tugging action after I stop. To get her attention, I tap her with the rolled up newspaper, which sends her into a dramatic fall. This leads to “Dead or Alive,” a skit wherein one clown (Leah) pretends to be dead, and the other (me) goes into hysterics. Why is it funny to watch one clown grieve her friend’s death, especially for an audience who shares this experience? Maybe because the outcome (death) doesn’t match the action (a tap from a newspaper). Or maybe because we know all along that this is a joke on me. As I sob, over Leah’s “dead” body, she sits up and makes fun of me. It reminds the audience that this is all a game.

What Do We Want To Leave Behind?

Ultimately, each group of clowns works together with local partners to decide what is appropriate for the team and the audience. Sometimes, like this summer in Colombia, we have a specific request not to include violence. Other times, the team makes those decisions on its own. We always ask, “What archetypes are harmful to uphold?” and, “Is there a way to shift some of the norms around how violence might normally play out?”

So for Clowns Without Borders, “No comedy without conflict” isn’t always true. Rather, we say, “No comedy to promote or normalize violence.”

Recently, CWB Program Director Molly Levine spoke to a group of 150 public health students at San Jose State University, in collaboration with TeatroVision. We shared stories about our current project in El Salvador and afterward, as the students left for their following classes, one woman approached and asked, “How do you send your artists to tour in a war zone like El Salvador?”

The question gave Molly pause. “Reflecting on my own time in El Salvador last year, I don’t think of the country as a war zone,” she says. “We experienced tenderness, resilience, stoicism and generosity. The violence touches everyone, but I didn’t witness the constant chaos and uncertainty that I would associate with a ‘war zone.’” Often, the picture painted by news media is not comprehensive, focusing only on instances of violence. When CWB visits communities around the world, we’re able to see the rich and complex lives that people are living—the moments in between.

Despite that, El Salvador is considered the world’s most dangerous place outside of a war zone, and is sometimes cited as the murder capital of the world. In fact, many humanitarian aid organizations don’t go to El Salvador. So why do we go to dangerous places? Or more importantly, how do we stay safe?

The answer to both questions is the same: Because we are invited.

When we are invited to a community in crisis, we do everything we can to get there. (Think you might be our next project partner? Read here.) Being invited means that we know our presence is wanted, which is critical for team safety. In El Salvador, for instance, we work with the Ministry of Health in a neighborhood which is controlled by one of the gangs. Through their work in developing resources and a health center, the regional team from the Ministry of Health has strong relationships with the local gang leaders. Though the gangs are in conflict with each other, they are not in conflict with us. Just as they want medical resources for their children, they also want laughter.

This invitation means that we have already established trust before we arrive. We maintain trust by making sure our performances and workshops aren’t controversial. We respect local customs, and most importantly, we keep our work non-political. “When we know artists will be working in gang-controlled territory, we do our best to prepare them for what it might be like,” Molly says. “When we arrive in a neighborhood and park in front of the Health Center, we expect that some individuals from the community will come check us out. They look at our car, they ask about our work and our props. They ask where we are from. We say hello. We welcome them to the performance venue. We smile and show respect in the way that is customary for where we are. We show them that we are at ease, that we remember that we’re welcome there, that we are safe there. That they are welcome with us as well. That they are also safe with us.”

Of course, this can be a lot easier said than done. It’s hard to feel safe when you’re putting your body in a place that our news media and public opinion consider violent. Our artists are humans, and often times they’re totally out of their element. Sometimes our invitations bring us to places where the local police department doesn’t go. In these moments, as in every moment on a CWB tour, our invitation is our strongest safety net.

But our invitation to be there is just the first step in staying safe. There’s also a lot of groundwork, including respecting the conflict as it’s happening. We—with the help of our local partners—make sure to know which gang territory we’re in and make sure that our costumes are neutral (i.e. not the colors of one gang or another).

In some regions in El Salvador, it’s been common for gang members to observe our workshops and performances to make sure we uphold our promise to stay neutral. These members are known to the Ministry of Health. We follow basic safety protocols, like staying with the group and traveling with our local contacts. While the safety of our team is paramount, we’re always performing a balancing act: We have to react to the situations presented to us with clear eyes, not ones clouded by stigma or fear of “what we know about these people from the news or the police.”

It can, of course, be unsettling to perform under these conditions. Part of keeping the team safe means being aware of how our own body language impacts others. You’ve probably heard of fight or flight, the body’s natural response to a threat. When we become agitated, even with fear, someone else can perceive it as anger. So we tell our artists that if they feel unsettled, the first thing they should do is exhale. Then, do a physical inventory, and make sure to stand in a neutral position. This trick of exhaling is a common part of physical performance. A handstand, partner lift, or inversion often starts with an exhale. We use our performance training to assess the impact of our physical presence, and we embrace our vulnerability with honesty.

Working in gang-controlled territory also requires us to re-pattern some behaviors and expectations. In most news media, “gangs” are “evil”. Gangs are talked about en masse, but when we worked in Distrito Italia, we had to remember that gangs are actually made up of individuals: humans who have not had access to the same resources as us.

When we talk about the gangs as a performing ensemble, we need to make sure that we don’t use the term “gang member” as a blanket term to mean “people we are afraid of,” or, “dangerous people.” In order to do our job well and to truly work in allyship with our audience members, we have to remember that these “gang members” are the parents of the children we are performing for—parents who want their children to be safe and have opportunities that they did not have. They are the older teenagers who participate in our workshops, laughing and playing like the children that they are.

Many young people enter gangs in El Salvador because of the promise of safety, the promise of community, and access to resources, money and technology that seems inaccessible from any other way. The young people in El Salvador are most at risk because many family units have fractured, with one or both parents moving away to find work abroad. To us, a warzone is so much more than a simple narrative of victimization and fear. To us, a warzone includes stories of resilience and individuals looking to restore their communities.