Frandu spent time with a New York City-based performance troupe before he came to Madison in the mid-2000s.
If you’ve seen Frandu, you know him. And if you don’t know him, you can’t miss him. The Colombian-born comedian/performance artist Frandu Smith has a Danny-DeVito-meets-Santa-Claus aesthetic, and there’s often a gaggle of adoring onlookers surrounding him wherever he goes. He’s a fixture at open mics around town, and for the last five years he’s been putting on an annual show, Frandutopia, at the Bartell Theatre.
I follow the Madison comedy scene, and have seen Frandu (birth name: Francisco Rodriguez) at various events over the past 10 years. I recently bumped into him at an open mic at Mother Fools, where he greeted me with open arms and asked how I was doing. He told me that he “didn’t have long left,” which shook me. Even though he has defied the odds already by outlasting a cancer diagnosis, losing Frandu would be tragic for Madison’s scene, so I wanted to sit down with him for an extended chat.
Frandu can harness a crowd’s energy like no one else. It’s like he absorbs all the cosmic force in the space and pours it into sentences that require an advanced string theory degree to comprehend. The guy’s catch-phrase is “Freakin’ frack!” Sometimes, he’ll say it three times in a row. His comedy is part monologue, part stream of consciousness, laced with expletives and non sequiturs. He’ll expound about love and share details from his own divorce and cancer story, before abruptly segueing into talking about someone taking a shit in a shoe. Yet there is an undeniable rhythm and warmth to his free-flowing delivery.
During our chat, he showed me an aspect of his personality I hadn’t seen much of on stage: vulnerability.
“I didn’t like me at all when I was a kid,” says Frandu, who grew up in Bogota, Colombia. He had a troubled relationship with his father. “He beat me, daily, for years, and so I hated myself,” says Frandu.
Young Francisco escaped the drama by going inward, enjoying time alone for reflection. “I started to understand something, like how to be at peace with myself, bring peace with my life,” he says. That’s why he doesn’t get worked up much. “To me, when I look around and I can see their ego coming through in their actions, I crack up.”
This easygoing attitude helped Frandu during his time as a featured player with the New York City movement theater troupe The Adaptors in the late 1980s. Frandu toured with the group, bringing his ethereal, jittery presence to stages around the world. He even got direct shout-outs in The New York Times and The Washington Post for his, um, “orgy with corn flakes,” whatever that means. When Frandu wanted to direct a piece for The Adaptors, the troupe members refused, so he moved on.
After moving to Madison in the mid-2000s, Frandu tried his hand at conventional stand-up, but in order to do it his own way, he decided to put on his own show. “If I wanna do something big, I don’t have to wait for anybody,” he says. He rented the Bartell, and Frandutopia was born. “The people loved it,” he says.
Frandutopia is definitely Frandu’s own kind of show. Frandutopia V, which ran April 11-13, was billed as offering “Music! Dancing! Comedy! Frandu! Moments of intense self-reflection! Laughter! Frandu!” Local band Nate Meng and the Stolen Sea provided a musical backdrop, and Frandu himself came to the stage to both joke and “spit out tragedies.” It’s as much avant-garde theater as it is comedy.
Perhaps now more than ever, Frandu could use some laughter if it is indeed the best medicine. “I have gone through a roller coaster of updates from worst to hopeful,” he says about his health. He has prostate cancer, and says doctors told him he had six years to live about eight years ago.
“My body pretty much came apart at the end of February, when preparing for my show for April,” says Frandu. “I felt very, very sick with pains in parts of my body that I didn’t know I had,” he said, looking down at his steaming tea.
Frandu is certainly eccentric, he’s enigmatic, but he’s also enlightened. “I’m proud of the fact that I reflect on my life, I look at my life, I reflect on what I do and what I don’t like,” he says. “All that reflection, it made me insightful. If I want something, it’s going to be me that has to do it.”
Frandu’s album from a few years ago, Rainbows From Tragedies, may have immortalized him, but nothing can compare to seeing him alive and in person. Watch for him at comedy and poetry open mics, and catch him while you can.
