There aren't many stand-up comedians who work in English and Spanish at the same time, but this is the case of Carmen Lynch, who two decades ago began performing in venues in New York, growing and reaching a large North American audience even in the mythical late television show by David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon or Conan O'Brian, and that one day he wanted to try to do it in Spanish.
Lynch explains that, in fact, she didn't even intend to go into comedy, she wanted to be an actress, but while she was waiting for more roles to come her way, she tried it, she liked it and apparently it did well enough. But what need did she have to try another language? She was the daughter of a North American soldier and a mother from Tortosa, she lived between the ages of 3 and 8 in Spain –first at the Rota base and later at the Torrejón de Ardoz base. And she more or less speaks the language: "At first I was a little embarrassed, but people kept telling me that my mistakes were funny, and now I feel more comfortable, even though I speak Spanish like an eight-year-old girl, and when I act here I think they laugh at the jokes... but also at how I speak”, he laughs.
When she was little she went to Tortosa every summer to see her grandparents – she understands a little Catalan, but speaks it little – and now she comes to Barcelona to see her sister and nephews. It was so that, one day, more than ten years ago, he discovered on Facebook that there were some places in the city with open mics in Spanish, in small bars, and he launched: "It was like an experiment and I had a great time, and I started to open the show for a friend of mine from Madrid who took me to other places in Spain for ten or fifteen minutes, and every time I came here there were more, it has grown a lot”.
“Now I do more and more performances in Spanish, also in New York, or in Miami, but they are Latino, not Spanish, and sometimes there are things that I find difficult to translate,” he recalls. Currently he also participates in the weekly podcast Podrid ser peor with Venezuelan comedian and television presenter Luis Chataing.
But you don't have to change your language to change your sense of humor: "It's not the same to act in the north or the south of the United States, or in a city or a town, the public's way of being can change very also due to age, and the truth is that the difference also makes it more fun, and also makes you see what works and what doesn't”.
In the performances, Lynch combines the texts with an austere staging, with silences that could be uncomfortable, controlled pauses and very careful facial gestures. He likes to be laughed at jokes, but he is aware that sometimes open laughter isn't everything. "It is that sometimes if they go with their partner they may think that it is not a good laugh depending on what...".
Do you feel Spanish there and North American here? “Today I feel mig i mig –and he says that in Catalan–. You can tell I'm not from here, but I have many memories and a lot of affection, because there have been many summers and many Christmases”. In any case, he does not use the Catalan reality in his monologues: “They wouldn't understand it there, there, when I perform in Spanish in the United States, the majority of the audience is of Latin American origin. What they do know is that Catalan is spoken and when I say that my family lives in Barcelona there is always someone who says they love the city”. Although he admits that "Americans love the Catalan obsession with poop. When I talk to my American friends about traditions like 'caga tió', they laugh, they think I'm kidding, that I'm making it up."
Last night he performed at the Cruïlla Comedy, sharing the stage with Bianca Kovacs, Marc Sarrats or Ignatius Farray, and from here nothing will return to the Barcelona stages, on the 15th at the Jamboree, in a double screening that will be recorded, to launch it at the same time the special that he just recorded at the Comedy Cellar in New York. There is a reason why she is especially excited: "The Jamboree is the place where my parents met."
