Let’s burn down the patriarchy
by Thusnelda Marín Jungmann
A sight to behold: a rickety ladder. On it Gina Segura, alias La Churry, the self-proclaimed Goddess of the evening – and at her feet, five men from the audience, chosen by her. It’s one of those WOOOOOOOW moments, in which she plays with circus imagery in the most tongue-in-cheek way imaginable: You expect the drum roll – and instead get pop culture bangers, contemporary circus. This magical stunt show is anything but ‘B1-friendly’ – not fireproof, but explosive. Not only because at the end, she vanishes on her motorbike through a burning hoop of fire, but above all because she doesn’t solve problems, she redefines them. But back to the beginning. To the moment when the question still hangs in the air as to whether she can actually live up to the grand proclamation “This is the night I change your life”.
As the sun sets, La Churry races onto the 360° aerial stage on her Harley to the sound of Highway to Hell. It’s instantly clear: this clown isn’t entering the modern ring to provide harmless entertainment. She wants to destabilise – in the best way possible. Or, to put it in the words of Britney Spears’ “Circus”: “She’s like the ringleader. She calls the shots.”
With a slap on her leather outfit, La Churry sets the tone: in her show, she doesn’t merely dress in codes of masculinity – she appropriates them and challenges them. This is precisely where her feminist clowning comes in: not as a moral indictment, but as a performative practice. Before every act: “Let’s burn it” – an echo that inevitably brings to mind “Let’s burn down the patriarchy”. And yet the evening never veers into the dogmatic. For she invites us to embrace the central principle of clowning together: not to take one’s own ego too seriously, the situation, however, the spectacle of empowerment – all the more so.
As the performance unfolds, she evolves into a tender tamer. She adopts classic gestures of power – control, command, the staging of risk – and reappropriates them. Time and again she selects men from the audience, commanding them – with a mixture of authority and care – to lie down on the floor, for example, their heads gently resting on a pillow. Then, once more as a classic tamer, she creates tension through controlled risk: the danger is hanging in the air, yet she tames it and offers the audience a sense of security. And she delivers her punchlines before one can anticipate them: “If you have problems in your life? I break them in two.” She draws a trail of white powder across the floor – and across the body of the man lying on the floor – and swings herself onto her machine. The “problem” she promised to split in two now lies literally before her. Tyres screech.
Yet the men keep running onto the stage voluntarily. Certainly, there is the social pressure of the live moment, the audience’s gaze, the implicit invitation to join in. And yet the crucial point is this: Segura does not force them; she invites them – and tests them at the same time.
The same goes for the ladder: Even before she climbs it, building the tension with every step, she tests the biceps of the five men, into whose arms she is about to leap. The reactions vary: rapt amazement follows a neutral technical inspection and even a harsh assessment: “Computer science” – her tongue-in-cheek comment on a rather slender bicep.
Yet he is not eliminated; he remains part of the selection. Once at the top: “Silence, I’m gonna do contemporary circus.” Just as the tension reaches its peak, her chewing gum falls out of her mouth. She has one of the men pick it up.
What follows is a pivotal moment of the evening: She offers him the prospect of applause, of recognition – if he puts the dirty chewing gum in his mouth. A play on disgust, social pressure and a health-risking “Come closer”, true to the motto of this year’s festival edition. She pushes the situation to the limit, laughs, lets the audience cheer him on. And yet: she does not cross the line. The man refuses. She accepts.
This is precisely where her art lies. Not in crossing boundaries, but in making them visible – and in respecting them. She jumps.
The WOOOOOOOW moments of this evening arise not only from spectacular imagery, but from an intelligent, slightly cynical yet fair engagement with contemporary circus itself. Feminist clowning reveals itself here as a practice of displacement: power is not destroyed but redistributed. Risk is not negated but reframed. Intimacy is created – without transgression.
Precisely because she does not expose the men, but cares for them, unsettling them without letting them fall, a complex dynamic emerges: The supposed stability of masculinity begins to waver visibly – and with it the audience’s certainties. In the end, something unexpected remains: lightness. Perhaps that is the strongest gesture of the evening. Alongside all the sharpness, alongside all the criticism, there is always an offer: “Take the risk and have fun.”
After the show, I meet the selected members of the audience. A chorus of men emerges: What does it feel like to catch La Churry? Who would have eaten the chewing gum? And has La Churry really changed their lives?