Gina Brillon’s The Floor is Lava is Grounded in Hope

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Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you’re reading this, she’s somewhere laughing.

Gina Brillon is a product of two worlds, and it’s not lost on her how such a life has prepared her for this particular moment in history.

“What I want people to take away […] is a refreshment, or a newfound sense of hope,” she says of her Amazon Prime special The Floor is Lava, produced in conjunction with Comedy Dynamics and recently premiered on Amazon Prime Video. “The special is so much about the duality I faced growing up—the duality of being Latina, but being light-skinned. The duality of not fitting in with my own people, but not fitting anywhere else. The duality of being broke, and now of being somewhat comfortable in life […] Had more people experienced duality in that way, there would be a lot more understanding and acceptance in the world.”

Brillon goes into the breakthrough in belief that brought her to this point onstage in a concluding monologue that I won’t spoil for those yet to watch the special, but it’s the circumstances she voices there that give the whole special such a sense of heart and likeability as well as laughs. In it, she takes years of experience back home—in some ways literally, considering the special was taped at Manhattan’s El Museo del Barrio, which houses Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Latin American art—to offer laughs as she dives into her upbringing, her time in the dating world, and what it feels like to bring those lived experiences into a new type of world, one that forces the two sides of duality to collide. And as if that feat isn’t impressive enough, many of us may not realize the half of it.

“It came about at such an interesting time,” Brillon says of the Amazon special offer, “because I had been offered an HBO special around the same time […] and like a nutjob, I said [I’d do] both.” Within the span of five months, she recorded a half-hour for HBO (HBO Latino’s Gina Brillon: Easily Offended), and then prepared a new hour to record for Amazon. Sound daunting? Brillon would agree (“I’m a person who likes challenges, but creatively it’s something I would never do again,” she laughed), and yet there was more reward to the intense scenario than just getting to grace such a large stage: offering a shot at center stage to people in her life. “I was so glad I got to hand-pick everything from someone to help me with light and set design, my stylist, my makeup artist […] these were all people that I know.”

That sense of lifting as she climbs feels like a theme for Brillon. In addition to bringing people in her life aboard for such a visible opportunity, she’s also tremendously giving on social media, where she regularly shares advice and inspiration with fans as young as 13 via Instagram DM’s. “I fell in love with comedy when I was 14, and there wasn’t a lot I could watch,” she mentions of how she aims to create comedy that families can watch. Reportedly, hearing back from her continues to surprise these young fans and budding comedians. But she will always prioritize taking the time, because she sees such support as central to her plight as a comedian, as an expectant mother, and as a person hoping to effect change. Such encouragement when she started comedy would have been a literal dream, as everyone around her instead sold a narrative of survival. Her strategy now? To share from the start: your dreams can happen. “In order to effect change, we have to start teaching children these things.”

The Floor is Lava is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. While Gina’s doing relatively little Zoom comedy in the age of social distancing, you can catch her on social media – on Instagram at @gbrillon, and on Twitter at @GinaBrillon.

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Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.
Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.