Monica Garrido on Bypass-ing the closet
8 Oct 2019.

“I was morbidly obese. I lost 60 kilos,” says Monica Garrido. I can hardly believe it. Sitting curled up on a couch, she seems like she was always petite. “A lot of people who haven’t seen me in a long time say, ‘Oh my God, what happened?'”

What happened was a gastric bypass, which is also the topic of her new show, Bypass. “They cut my stomach and rearranged it to the size of a golf ball. It happened almost two years ago. It basically changes your whole way of eating. The surgery is irreversible.” I asked her if she was ever the funny fat girl in whatever show she was in, and she said it happened only once, “when I played Tracy in a production of Hairspray. Now I’m just this size.”

Monica hails from Mexico. At 12, she felt the first stirrings of lesbian desire, but she thought of it in simple terms, as though she was just going to be like her dad and like women. “Then I saw Degrassi The Next Generation,” she said. “It can happen. Two girls liking each other. That’s when I figured it out.”

She left Mexico at 24 and Degrassi helped her figure out that she wanted to come to Canada. “I couldn’t tell the stories I wanted to tell in Mexico. I miss it. I miss the people in my family. But Toronto is my favourite place in the world and it feels like home.” Monica wasted no time once she got here. She went to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and joined the Emerging Creator Unit. Her show The Cunning Linguist won the 2016 Queer Acts Audience Award and she was also the 2018 recipient of the Queer Emerging Artist Award. Then she decided to take an improv class at Second City to help her with her English. “Speaking my own language is like eating a cake. The way Spanish feels in my mouth is joyful. It feels faster. It’s also the slang I use. It feels like getting home and taking my pants off.” But mastering English just gives her an even broader palate. She has her eye on bigger stages, on TV, even movies, but she remains grounded. “I want to be able to pay the bills. That is also a big dream of mine.

“I live here now at Second City. I never thought I was going to do comedy. I knew I was funny, and in Mexico I did some clown because my dad wanted me to be a clown. He thought that it seemed like a way to make money because a famous clown in my home town really wanted to work with me.” Once the comedy bug bit, she couldn’t stop. She joined Tom Hearn’s Extravaganza Eleganza troupe, did the Bob Curry Fellowship program and is currently a member of House Co. She also co-hosts the Radio Aluna Theatre Podcast which will be a big part of the upcoming Caminos 2019 Festival. Monica Garrido is a one-woman industry. 

“Something gave me confidence. Was it the weight loss, or the therapy? I have a white man that I pay to go talk to. I couldn’t do this big a change without working on my mental health. When I first got here, I was really secretive, and didn’t use my real name on stage. But being gay is such a big part of the art I make. I always call Canada my closet, a very big closet.” 

But I doubt any closet could possibly contain someone who has this much to say.