'I think it's important to be telling these stories right now': Francisca Muñoz talks "Miss You Like Hell"

When Francisca Muñoz takes the stage in “Miss You Like Hell”, her face will look familiar to TheatreSquared audiences—that’s because she’s already taken memorable turns in T2 shows like “American Mariachi” and “Tiny Beautiful Things”. Back for a third time, Munoz took the time out of a very busy schedule to answer a few questions for us about her path to acting and “Miss You Like Hell”.

You’ve been in three TheatreSquared shows so far: American Mariachi, Tiny Beautiful Things, and now Miss You Like Hell. Can you talk a little bit about what it’s like working with TheatreSquared, now that you’ve done it three times?

I obviously like it—or, they like me. I really enjoy I enjoy being here. TheatreSquared as a whole has a very warm and welcoming community. It's a great professional theater, and from the front of house to the back of house, everybody is just super friendly. And I feel very fortunate that I'm able to make art, especially in this time—we were going through really the peak of COVID and Mariachi was my first show back. It was also the very first show where I was in a room with an entire Latinx cast. So that was something really special for me to do that.  It’s really beautiful for me to be here and to see a lot of the same people here still, which is great. It says a lot about the theater itself. That's always something that you want to be around and have that experience and really get to know the people that you're working with, because you we do spend a lot of time here.

How you did you end up in the United States from Australia?

Actually, I was born in Chile. So I'm Hispanic. My parents and I, we migrated to Australia, when I was about four years old. So I grew up in Australia, and I'm an Australian citizen. Actually, I should tell you, I became an American citizen in January. Now I have triple citizenship! I'm a citizen of the world. So I studied acting in Australia, and I remember one of my acting professors, he said to me, and I was very young, maybe 19—he said, ‘You’re very good, but you will never work in this country.’ That was the hardest thing I could have heard, but the best thing I had to hear.  He said, ‘There’s just no space for people that look like you.’ And that was a really hard pill to swallow. Because I knew it was true. Watching TV and going to see musicals, there was never anybody that looked like me on TV or on stage. …And I went through the whole thing of dyeing my hair blonde to look a certain way, but it just wasn't me. Finding myself, who I was, that took a long time—accepting who I was because I wanted the industry to accept me as something else, but if I couldn't accept myself, it was never going to happen. That didn't happen until I moved to the United States.

We did a show when I was in Florida that was part of the STEM program for the kids at a school. It was produced by a Chicago theater called the House Theatre. It was called Kitty Hawk, the story about the Wright Brothers, and I played Katherine, which, in a normal world, I would never get to play—but casting said, ‘No, we want this to be a completely diverse cast, and have these actors on stage.’ And that was, for me, the first time when I sort of went, ‘Okay, this can happen.’  There’s still a long way to go in terms of diversity in theatre, and TV and film, probably more so on stage. But I think and I hope we're heading in the right direction and telling these stories, because they're important stories to tell—like with “Miss You Like Hell” that we're doing now. These are the stories that people really need to see—to understand why people leave their homes and risk everything. I think it’s important to be telling these stories right now.

[The “Miss You Like Hell” director] Esteban [Arévalo Ibáñez] and I were just talking about how so many people don’t understand the difficulties in finding a legal pathway to immigration.

Yeah, it's very interesting, just before I came here I was doing a show, a world premiere of a musical called “Somewhere over the Border by Brian Quijada. It’s actually the story of his mom crossing the border from El Salvador to the United States. She had left her baby son behind; in the musical, she crossed once but in reality, it took her three times because she got caught crossing three times. And then it took her about 10 years to finally be able to become a legal resident and get the green card. It’s a tough journey, leaving everything, and it’s not just about leaving, going in search of a better life—it’s about the effect that it has on the people that you leave behind, the families and the mothers and the fathers and what they have to deal with, knowing that you’ve left and having this uncertainty.

“Miss You Like Hell”, I think does a great job of introducing these concepts in a way where you identify with the characters, you empathize with them, you hear their story.

Yeah. With Beatriz, what I love about her, is that she’s this real free spirit. She has her faith in her saints and everything, but she has very traditional beliefs at the same time. When we first meet her, it's very easy to say, ‘Oh, she's just a bad mother. She was not there her daughter.’ It's very easy to say that, but we don't know why she's done the things that she's done until we kind of we get to know her story and why she has been hiding for so long, and always kind of always looking over her shoulder because she doesn't know what is coming up next— and the sacrifices that she makes, because she sees that her daughter is in trouble.

It's not just a story of an undocumented person, but it's also a mother and daughter story. It's also meeting people along the way who are also trying to find their way in life. It’s about the beautifully complicated human beings that we that we are.

Can you talk a little bit about [composer/lyricist] Erin McKeown’s music and what that's like to perform?

It’s just so beautiful. The music itself is so diverse. When I first heard the prologue in the beginning, it has these really cool drum rhythms, real percussive, very sort of indigenous sounds, which are very representative of Beatriz, and so we get that sort of feel in the beginning. And then there's a little bit of like a soulful R&B, then there's sort of like country and like Bluegrass and more ballad type of songs.  It is very different musically than other musicals. The way that the music is represented through this show, it really takes us on a journey of the beginning of where we are, and then taking us to certain parts of the country on the road trip. The different sort of genres that we discover helps us pinpoint places throughout through out the play.

The mother/daughter relationship in this show is central to the plot, and you and Janyce have to portray a relationship that has been through so much, that has so much water under the bridge, so much tension and history and complicated feelings—and you have three weeks to build this relationship that will appear authentic on stage. Is that difficult to do as an actor?

I think it depends. You never know, when you do these regional shows, what you're going to get. You hope for the best. I've been very fortunate that every time— and not just here at TheatreSquared, but every other regional house that I've been to— there just seems to be a sense of community, so it's very easy to build that relationship. Janyce, who plays Olivia—we just clicked from day one. I remember [T2 Artistic Director] Bob Ford saying to me, ‘Seeing you two work in the space, we knew it was going to be magic when we put you two together.’ We spend a lot of hours together in the in the theater and rehearsing but then it's also spending time outside together building that sense of community that this show really needs because of the different characters that we meet along the way. So I think it can be difficult, but I think I've just been very, very fortunate. And I'm so thankful for that.