Growing up between Argentina and Italy, Gigi had a lisp and a stutter as she struggled to find her place in a household that straddled diverse languages and worlds. “I always felt I didn’t quite fit. Later in life I think you find the richness of that, but I spent a long time struggling to find my voice.”
The journey from having a speech impediment, to working as a VoiceOver actor, and performing in a show "where I just speak for an hour straight,” in some ways makes sense, laughs Gigi: “there was clearly a need for me to assert myself."
Despite taking acting lessons as a child, “I never dreamt of being an actor," Gigi says. "When you’re from a small town that never feels like a possibility.” She studied literature, worked in magazines, but was encouraged to go to drama school after getting involved in a friend’s play in London. Her years in Buenos Aires inspired her even further: “The theatre there is a reaction to poverty, need and the government closing historical cultural centres. There’s such a young and hungry artistic culture.”
One of the products of this inspiration has been a foray into writing. “I consider myself a writer even though I struggle to call myself that,” says Gigi. “I feel stifled by fear and self-doubt and imposter syndrome.” Her recent Edinburgh Fringe play 'How to Kill a Chicken' (Como Matar Un Pollo) addresses themes of power, violence and consent.
"Writing gives me a sense of power," says Gigi, where working as an actor doesn’t always. “As a writer you have a sense of agency and control over your narrative, but as an actor I seem to get all these roles that are really problematic - the stripper, the sex worker - and I wonder, should I do this? But I have to do this, because I don’t get offered too many jobs. So I do things that are controversial, that I find problematic. It’s a weird one.”
As she surges forward in her career, Gigi is determined to break out of the pigeonhole. “Culture seems to reiterate these stories only because there’s a lack of representation of other types of people. It’s really reductive. I want to participate in the cultural conversation in a different way,” and her boundary-pushing work sets out to do just this.
Gigi is dressed by Hanami D'or. Makeup by Dayana Jerez. Hair by Deborah David
