Boring, tired or even wanting to retire? These are questions you don’t want to ask 70-year-old Floriana Frassetto. It is overflowing with liveliness and even after 50 years of mumming it is full of ideas and zest for action. She is the last active founding member of the world-famous theater company and is currently preparing the anniversary tour – a journey back to the beginning.
Over a year without appearances. How have you fared during the pandemic?
Floriana Frassetto: Fortunately, I’m never bored. I live and work in the same building – every day I am grateful for all the space I have here. It goes up and down the stairs all day, from the apartment to the studio and back. I am fully occupied with projects and live here in a world of my own. There is always something to do, we had an inquiry for a show in China. So I immediately started a second production of the costumes. That’s a lot of work – also with my assistant.
Are you originally a seamstress?
Not a real one. Most of the time I taught myself to a large extent. Even as a girl I liked to do handicrafts, sewing and design. As a young woman, I went to a fashion academy in Rome. But there was no room for my own ideas, I was too modern for the director. After two months I told my mother that I no longer wanted to go to this school, but that I wanted to implement my own visions. I could do that at Mummenschanz – nobody told me anything there, and I sewed costumes out of plastic bags.
Floriana Frassetto met her colleagues for the first time in November 1970 in Rome, two young Swiss clowns named “Avant et Perdu”: Andres Bossard and Bernie Schürch. They stayed in contact and met 1972 in Paris again.
I had just started training as a pantomime at Lecoq School when they called me. Your lighting technician was down and I was supposed to step in. I probably had more stage fright behind the scenes than they did on stage. But I had also discovered and mended the holes in their costumes, that’s the Italian mom in me. We felt that we were a good group. It wasn’t just easy, the two were a strong duo. I was able to bring in femininity and free spirit and thus found my place.
Thomas Meier
Floriana Frassetto (70), the daughter of Italian immigrants, already knew at 17 that she wanted to go on stage and attended, among other things, the Teatro Studio movement school run by Swiss Roy Bosier. In 1972 she founded Mummenschanz with Bernie Schürch (76) and Andres Bossard (1944–1992). The trio experienced a rapid rise, played on Broadway and toured the world. During this time, Frassetto’s daughter Melanya (32) was born. At the peak of his success, Bossard died in 1992 after a serious illness. After that, Mummenschanz continues to play as a duo. When Schürch left the stage in 2012, Frassetto continued with young artists. She lives in Altstätten SG.
Thanks to you, Mummenschanz still exists after 50 years, what is your driving force?
The years have passed so quickly. We have traveled around the world nine times – and I would love to do it again right away. Mummenschanz is something unique. It gave me the opportunity to meet so many different people and discover the same thing everywhere. Each of us has the same playful soul, there is a child in each of us. We inspire people to discover this side of themselves, to let their creativity come alive. This is a gift for us and the audience. So why should I stop?
For the anniversary tour you will be on stage 100 times next year. Where do you get the energy from?
Of course I don’t have the same energy as I used to, but it’s still there. Practicing alone in the studio is sometimes a bit dry and boring. If we are allowed to act together again after this difficult period, there will be more vitality in all of us. It’s time we were allowed to touch again, but we also have to be careful.
We got used to wearing masks. You have always been doing this at Mummenschanz. Don’t you lose emotions in the process?
You can’t compare the medical mask with ours. Ours have an expression and they serve to show the innermost emotions, character and personality that are otherwise hidden. And if you look each other in the eye, you can read so much in it. We will actually include corona and masks in our piece. In what form, we’re still rehearsing.
Have you never felt lonely in the past year?
I can also talk to my foam rubber masks, they just don’t answer (laughs). I’m lucky: my daughter doesn’t live that far away. And I have lovely neighbors. Because I don’t drive myself, one of them takes me to go shopping every week. Even when I’m in the grocery store with a mask on, I’m sometimes greeted as Ms. Mummenschanz. I’m always very happy about that. But I miss the tour, the big cities, my friends in New York, Paris and Zurich. The latter will come to visit me soon, there will be a little party.
Has your daughter not followed in your footsteps as an artist?
Therefore she accompanies me in the background on other projects. The St. Gallen Historical Museum is planning an exhibition to mark the Mummenschanz anniversary. My daughter saw the room for me and photographed all the objects and costumes. A wonderful project, in the meantime almost everything has been packed and written down. It is a huge honor that we come to the museum. We were often in museums with Andres and Bernie, sometimes with a performance.
Is that also available at the exhibition?
No, there’s no time for that, we’re on tour. But there is a kind of mummery stage for everyone. The visitors can slip into the tube that we use for our number and perform themselves.
Do you slip into the pipe yourself?
No, I don’t do all the numbers anymore, some are too physically demanding. But I still like to play with the toilet paper, you could almost say that I was born with it. Andres and Bernie played it before, back then with words. Now they are understood all over the world.
Hand on heart: When is the time for Ms. Mummenschanz to retire?
Pension? What’s this? No time and no desire. The next two to three years are full of tours and engagements. Maybe in a hundred years!
Mummenschanz’s 50 Years anniversary tour celebrates its premiere in Zurich on December 10, 2021. After that, Mummenschanz will play around 100 shows in 27 locations across Switzerland by the end of June 2022. Info: www.mummenschanz.com / tickets at www.ticketcorner.ch