- 14 minutos de lectura‘
Manu Fanego is currently starring in Le Frigó, a play that encapsulates much of what defines the work of its author, Copi. Considering Raúl Damonte Botana (Copi), who was born in Buenos Aires, later resided in Paris, and passed away in 1987, means delving into a corrosive, sensitive, and unflinching exploration of society’s darker corners and hypocrisies, all delivered with a liberated and desacralized voice.
Speaking about Manu Fanego also inevitably brings up many of those themes. He cultivates a freedom to choose his own path in life, though he surprisingly admits to not feeling “so free.”
The son of the late actor Daniel Fanego bears a striking physical resemblance to his father, as well as a similar approach to his craft and a shared work ethic.
Fanego chose a quintessential San Telmo café in Buenos Aires to speak with LA NACION and reflect on the multitude of projects he’s currently juggling with great success. Many consider him a cult artist. The conversation also provides an opportunity to remember his father—who passed away in September 2024—and the tough time of family mourning.
At 44 years old, in addition to performing in Le Frigó, he’s part of the cast of Modelo vivo o muerto, the cult hit by Bla Bla y Cía. And, as if that weren’t enough, he brings to life Mika de Frankfurt, a somewhat erratic transgender singer who, accordion in hand, shares songs, humor, and stories about her life. The character has a devoted following, demonstrating the growing appeal of diverse representation in performance.
“When I tell a story, I act, I produce faces, I use different voices. Some people think it’s a mockery, but it isn’t; I like to represent what I’m saying. I communicate better that way than if I just used words. I’m convoluted with spoken language, I use strange words, it just comes out that way.”
—I perceive you as particularly well-read.
—I’m not.
—Really?
—I started acting at 28, before that I was a musician. I took a course with (Guillermo) Angelelli at that age and I said to myself: “I’m an actor.” That’s when I realized it.
—Until that moment, had you ever fantasized about acting?
—Not at all, music was a place of a lot of friendship and familiarity. In my opinion, music is a superior art. It’s beyond metaphor, it’s vibration. It changes a state. A play can also do that, but it involves mobilizing yourself to the theater, paying attention to the plot. I was very concerned with the matter of music and my dad already had his path made, so acting was his space.
—Did your father ever point out that he saw potential in you?
—No.
—Wasn’t it a topic of conversation?
—Not at all. Regardless, my parents, my sister and I were instilled with a lot of artistic play. In my house, we were always encouraged in the arts in general; if you wanted to paint or write, they encouraged you to do it.
—An act of freedom…
—That’s what it’s about, freedom.
Beyond the awakening of his vocation at 28, observing the work of Daniel Fanego, his father, undoubtedly had an impact on him. “I accompanied my old man to the theater since I was a child; theater and acting were part of my life. I went to film sets, to television channels, I stayed with him during after-dinner conversations with his colleagues.”
—Was there any specific guidance or teaching about the craft?
—When I participated in a school play in fourth grade, he gave me my first direction. No one had ever told me how to act before.
That character was a rancher friend of Manuel Belgrano who received the news of the patriot’s death. “The first thing my old man told me was ‘with learned lines, there is no bad comedy.’ Over the years, he explained to me that the ideal is to study the lines as a running text, without punctuation.”
—Like Molly Bloom.
—Exactly, because, once you know the text, you can do whatever you wish with that raw material, set in the pauses and the tones.”
—When, at 28, the acting vocation awoke in you, did he encourage you?
—Yes, always, my old man was thrilled to observe me act.
—Did he give you constructive criticism about your work?
—Not really, he only offered his opinion when I asked for it. He was very critical, so he was careful how he said it, because he was also very self-demanding. I didn’t always listen to him; he had a way of looking at theater that had to do with his time. Acting changes from generation to generation. A great actor from fifty years ago, maybe you can’t read him as such today.
—Do you see yourself as resembling your father?
—Yes, very much so. I understand people who refer to him when they see me. They point out the physical resemblance, some common gestures, and the similar voice.
—Did you have time to say goodbye to him?
—Yes, it was a very long goodbye. We knew he was going to leave, due to the type of illness he had, and that made the last year and a half bring us closer than ever, my sister, my mother, from whom he had been separated for years, and his current wife.
—Was he aware of his end?
—I think so, but we didn’t talk about it, it wasn’t an easy topic. Beyond that, we were able to tell each other everything, talk a lot, the idea was that he had to leave with the certainty that he had left a lot of love in this plane. I am very grateful to him, beyond the privileges he gave me for having his last name. He had a great commitment to his family, but he was very reserved, he never talked about it publicly, he didn’t obtain along well with all the press. I, love to chat. If I see that the other person has no ulterior motive, I have no problem talking.
—You come across as a very free person.
—I don’t know if I agree with you so much.
—Why?
—I love that you say it and perceive me that way, it makes me feel good, but freedom, at this moment more than ever, is something to be debated and built, to be reviewed. What is freedom? Like love, they are words that are used and battered a lot. Beyond the fact that there is a sector that claims it as its own and waves it as a flag, there is something that makes us feel free in places where we are not, and vice versa, because we believe we are tied to things that, in reality, we are not so tied to.
-For example?
-I suppose I couldn’t live without a cell phone, but it’s not true, although I should change a lot of habits. The world should modify a lot of habits to free itself from some things. My head gets tangled up thinking about whether I am free or not.
—Where do you feel you inhabit a space where you don’t fully express yourself?
—It has to do with the clothes I wear, the food I eat, the people I see, the bars I go to; everything, from the start, is a mandate, an imposition.
—One hundred percent freedom is a utopia or, at least, very few can exercise it.
—You have to do the work of freeing yourself from small chains that we acquire throughout life, that we can detect and have the power to break. Sometimes, they can’t be broken so much. We are chained to material things, concepts, people and we don’t allow ourselves to doubt. When doubt enters, if you have courage, you begin to investigate and see that there are other possibilities and not feel so different with other types of decisions. It’s about feeling good with things very different from those imposed on you with the logic of happiness.
—It’s complex to get out of the social framework.
—Comparison in this society annihilated us. The idea is to be well, but our own thoughts, sometimes, go against that. We ourselves are our worst enemies.
He has been in therapy since he was nineteen. “It helped me a lot, it’s about another person who returns what you communicate to him, in a more orderly way.”
—What does it mean to be non-binary, something that is talked about a lot, but that is not always understood in a proper way?
—We see understood less than it seems or the publicity that issues like this have. People believe that there is a greater empowerment of diverse identities propagated in society than there really is. In reality, it is a sector that fights tooth and nail. Trans women are killed, almost every day a transvesticide happens in the country; that is why there is a pride march. Diversities have to say “we are proud to be who we are”, but society still doesn’t want to understand it.
—How did the elaboration of your characteristic identity come about?
—I am somewhat more ambivalent than society wants me to be a man. I don’t feel that way. I don’t identify.
–What defines much of the patriarchal and macho.
-I am a person educated as a man, that my voice is strong and that I had the weight that Daniel Fanego had. They wanted to put me in the place of the heartthrob that my old man once had, just for being his son. At ten years old, I liked a classmate, I told him, but the whole school ended up making fun of me. Paul Preciado (Spanish philosopher) says that, in the 1800s, marriage was established as the basis of nations because it was necessary to populate was a political and economic interest, and today that same power is striving to prevent that from falling apart. If patriarchy did not dominate everything, perhaps the wars would not be what they are now.
Together with Zoe Hochbaum, he has also shared some works with her. “We are doing very well.”
On the stage of the Teatro Picadero, he is responsible for taking on the story of Le Frigó, where he plays Madame L, a character who retires from the world of fashion and dedicates herself to writing her memoirs and exchanging opinions—from the irruption of a refrigerator—with her lover, her editor, her driver, a detective, her psychiatrist, her mother and even her maid, which implies for Fanego a formidable scenic unfolding.
—What kind of possibilities does revisiting Copi offer today?
-In Le Frigó, he mocks a part of society to which he also belonged and pointed out the difficulties of a successful social class in material terms, fame and power, but which exhibits vulnerability inwards, in the family, in excesses; he puts on the table loneliness, mental health and what happens to those who do not follow the mandate. He does it in such a disruptive way that, in our current context, it can be read as revolutionary. It’s hard to hear.
–How is Madame L, your character?
-She is a very sensitive person, who wants to do things right, but has the external world very closed. That is why she created a universe before the impossibility of living in the real one. A reality that many maricas have suffered and have not been able to deploy.
–And in that, her own beings that had a link with her appear.
-Her ghosts. Everything is a symbolism.
The theater of Alejandro Urdapilleta and Humberto Tortonese was an influence for the construction of Madame L, as well as the imaginary proposed by the remembered Club del Claun. Scenic borders of remarkable richness in the democratic spring.
“I also saw a lot of Sportivo Teatral by Ricardo Bartis and his way of acting, and of the looseness of the normal that Pompeyo Audivert proposes, with whom I studied for two years.” Le Frigó is directed by Tatiana Santana and features original music by Rony Keselman.
Just as text-based theater is one of his expressive possibilities, Manu Fanego found in Mika de Frankfurt another facet of his creative range. A singer who shares anecdotes, pains and joys, flavors and textures of a life that is anything but conventional.
Her influence is such that, for many, she is even a symbiotic mirror. What Mika de Frankfurt tells, accordion in hand, does not go unnoticed and dialogues with some gender issues that occupy the one who puts her body into it.
Next Saturday, with three performances, Mika de Frankfurt will be the main course of an experience with multiple sensory resonances. Her performance will be framed within a tour of the Bencich Tucumán building, which will culminate in a vermouth in a viewpoint overlooking the city and the presentation of Mika and musician Jorge Thefs, who often accompanies her in her performances. The curation of this formidable experience is by theater researcher Natacha Koss.
“For a long time I hid, I didn’t want people to know that I was Mika, but now everyone knows.” This year, the film—akin to a documentary—Yo soy Mika, directed by Leandro Tolchinsky, will be released. Relentless.
The album Cosas lindas, available on Spotify, is the concretization of the repertoire of Mika de Frankfurt.
Fanego is also part of Alegrías de a peso, “a cumbia band that has existed for twenty-five years; now we make Amazonian cumbia, native to the jungle of Peru.”
“Bla Bla y Cía. came out of the very independent independent theater, of performances with a hat in El ojo verde, a training space. We started in August 2010 with performances with a hat where there were few lights and where people sat on plastic chairs or on the floor.”
The influence was clear, the British group Monty Python, the program Cha Cha Cha or Les Luthiers, among other groups of artists linked to comedy and humor.
Modelo vivo o muerto, the collective dramaturgy proposal that gave them a privileged place of visibility, even reaping spectators from the most commercial circuit, is directed by Francisca Ure and added to its cast the actress Carola Oyarbide, who quickly merged with the original formation made up of Sebastián Furman, Pablo Fusco, Julián Lucero, Tincho Lups and the same Fanego.
Modelo vivo o muerto became a cult piece that the fans of Bla Bla y Cía. See over and over again.
A final show of a school of art faces the appearance of the “live” model, which unleashes an “unorthodox” investigation by the authorities of the institution. The material, hilarious from beginning to end, also allows the crossing of languages where the physical, music and the transit of bodies in the scenic space conform a very rich whole.
“My character is the martyr of the work, the one that everyone attacks, a place that tenderizes me. He is, to a large extent, the purest of all. I enjoy embodying that hook so that all the nonsense is justified.”
Fanego organizes his work from physical availability, something usual in his compositions where the language of the word has as much weight as the symbolic of the available body. “It is a closer to reality, in the midst of the absurd, it has a nuance of naturalness, that seems interesting to me.”
Modelo vivo o muerto will return to Calle Corrientes, simultaneously it will be presented in various locations of the Conurbano and, in April, will step on stages in Madrid, Menorca and Barcelona.
Before saying goodbye, he emphasizes: “We are always creating a character, building a role. The more we do it, as “Flaco” (Luis Alberto) Spinetta would say, “we decorate reality.” I don’t believe in art as something separate from life. How to live life, with its own difficulties, is also a form of art.”
Le Frigó, Thursdays at 10 PM, Teatro Picadero (Pasaje Enrique Santos Discépolo 1857)
Modelo Vivo o muerto, April 1 and 8 at 10 PM, Teatro Metropolitan (Av. Corrientes 1343)
Mika de Frankfurt in Mika solo set, March 7 at 5:30 PM, 7 PM and 8:30 PM, Edificio Bencich Tucumán (Tucumán 810)
