A Conversation with Director Natasha Mercado, "El Mago Loco," "The Birth of Disco," and "Elena Martinez's Funeral Show,” Hollywood Fringe, by James Scarborough
April 27, 2025
Natasha Mercado's three new works at Hollywood Fringe 2025 show a director who freshly combines vulnerability with absurdity. Having built her reputation through solo performances and directing, Mercado now brings her "Soft Clown" approach to three productions: "Funeral Show," "The Birth of Disco," and "El Mago Loco."
What connects these works is Mercado's commitment to emotional honesty within surrealist settings. Her directing avoids the ironic detachment that often plagues experimental theater. Instead, she creates spaces where performers can explore genuine emotional change while following creative impulses.
Mercado's background in clowning shapes her work, but she goes beyond that tradition's limits. Where traditional clowning relies on physical comedy, her approach explores deeper emotions. The result is theater that doesn't just amuse but resonates.
Her work balances structured narrative with spontaneity, grief with joy, and cultural expectations with personal freedom. This combination positions Mercado as an important voice in LA's experimental theater. Her embrace of emotional vulnerability while maintaining comedic intelligence offers theater that stimulates the mind and touches the heart.
Below follows an email conversation with Natasha Mercado.
JS: Your three new works cover different themes - grief, feminist awakening, and cultural identity. What connects these pieces? How does your "Soft Clown" approach adapt to each story?
NM: Yes, these shows are so different. That’s been a huge part of what’s made it so exciting to work on them at the same time. They’re all very important and interesting themes to explore, of course. But they’re each filled with so much play that only these individual performers can bring to the stage. If we swapped them around to do each other’s shows, they’d be completely different because of how they each command the stage is unique to their lived experience. I love helping performers hone in on what gives them the most delight in front of people. Because if they’re having fun, so is the audience. A lot of my approach to co-devising and directing these shows is to examine what symbols are coming up over and over again and how they are connected. The original concept for each show was revealed and amplified even more so through surprise and synchronicity. They’re all fever dreams in the best way.
JS: "Funeral Show" explores grieving for someone who's still alive - a complex emotional territory. How do you help performers navigate this paradox? How does the mixed-media format help tell this story?
NM: I think big emotions are a gateway to our absurdity. If we follow any emotion, anger, sadness, happiness or fear, down the rabbit hole of its greatest expression, it gets more and more weird. Grief is no different. And there’s so much stigma about this topic in particular. When Elena originally approached me with her idea, she didn’t know that I have a similar dynamic within my family, so I relate big time and anticipate others will too. I immediately was so excited for her because she is such a lovable performer. It takes a tremendous amount of resilience and courage to put together a show like this. And the mixed-media is in the spirit of making it the most embodied version of that grief and love intersection. There’s piano, there’s drag, there’s dancing. It’s a great time.
JS: You've described your work as "clown-informed, heart-driven, and deeply hilarious." How do you keep emotional truth while using absurdist elements, especially when addressing sensitive themes like cultural expectations in "El Mago Loco"?
NM: Clown is meant for this. The clown pokes holes in authority, but can only do so successfully if they are loved by the audience. I’d say Linzy’s show has a bit of bouffon in it too— a cousin of clown that’s rooted in parody. The bouffon’s ultimate goal is to make fun of someone right to their face, but it’s so undeniably funny, the person they’re making fun of loves it. This means that the comedy has to be rooted in very specific and very pointed observations on how society works, how people act and how it affects others. It takes a very skilled performer to pull something like this off and Linzy is completely overqualified.
JS: Movement seems central to your productions. How do you develop this physical language with performers, particularly those without clown or physical theater training?
NM: I think channeling ideas and emotions into our body, when maybe we would normally put it into words, makes the expression even more personal, vulnerable and poetic. The challenge is always finding each individual’s growth edge and how to communicate in a way that inspires them to sustainably keep exploring. For example, I might give the direction as we devise, “do it beautifully!”, which can sometimes free a person up to make different choices. But if it doesn’t resonate, I’ll keep adjusting how I communicate what I’m looking for until I see a sparkly look in their eyes. Then, I know where getting to a good place. And the good place is where we give ourselves permission to just be ourselves, no matter the “training”. It’s very intuitive, it’s very silly.
JS: While you're deeply active as a performer — currently touring your solo show #1 Son internationally — you're also helping others launch their own creative journeys through directing. How does performing alongside directing influence your creative process? What has surprised you about balancing both roles?
NM: I love “making” so much. And making a show versus performing in front of audiences feels like two completely different things. While the show is always adjusted out in the wild, there’s something extremely special about working really hard on something until I feel proud to debut it. It’s like planning a surprise party. When I perform, I feel like I’m gathering data to implement in the making whether it’s on my feet adjustments during my own performance or in a rehearsal with other performers. My experience on stage gives me confidence in my “comedy math” skills. How to give direction even when a full audience isn’t there. Of course during the run of a show, the audience will sometimes bring us to our knees with an outlier reaction, but those are sometimes the best and most memorable shows. Performing while directing helps me prepare folks for those moments, so they don’t get stuck. And also helps me have more compassion for myself when I come up against it because at the end of the day, it’s inevitable. It’s empowering to remember even when I’m on stage and it goes into a place I didn’t expect, I can use that experience to help myself and others be more resilient. I’ll still choose this path because of how transformative and fulfilling that tightrope walk is.
JS: In "The Birth of Disco," you connect philosophical concepts with feminist awakening. What challenges do you face when turning abstract ideas into physical theater? How do you keep the work accessible without losing its depth?
NM: Clown is perfect for making theatre accessible. It’s the great equalizer and I’d die on the hill of saying it’s the most holistic way to approach performance. Clown doesn’t ask of its audience to sit politely until the show is over. How the audience is reacting to the show determines how we as clowns play with them. “The Birth of Disco” is an ensemble show that was built with a tremendous amount of trust and dream logic. Holy Holy is made up of 7 women who seem to be very different, which can be challenging at times as we’re developing one, cohesive show— yet they are fiercely devoted to empowering each other through play, which was our North Star throughout this process. It’s tapping into what we navigate as women through physical action that’s completely unexpected and nonsensical, yet somehow emotionally true. I’ve learned so much from them.
El Mago Loco will be performed at The Cat's Crawl on June 5 at 7:00 pm, June 22 at 6:30 pm, June 26 at 10:00 pm, and June 28 at 2:30 pm. Tickets are $15-25. The Cat's Crawl is located at 6520 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles. For more information, click here: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/11938?tab=tickets
The Birth of Disco will be presented at the Broadwater Black Box with performances on June 7 at 11:00 am, June 14 at 11:55 pm, June 22 at 5:30 pm. Tickets are $20. The Broadwater Black Box is located at 1076 Lillian Way, Los Angeles. For more information, click here: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/11823?tab=tickets
Elena Martinez's Funeral Show will run at the Broadwater Studio on June 8 at 6:30 pm, June 17 at 9:30 pm, June 23 at 5:00 pm, June 26 at 8:00 pm, and June 29 at 12:30 pm. Tickets are $25. The Broadwater Studio is located at 6322 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles. For more information, click here: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/11938?tab=tickets