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14 書香人物 P E R S O N A L I T Y & B O O K S SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES SUNDAY PROFILE [ HARDCOVER: UK ] Manu Chao’s Left: Playwright Gina Gionfriddo. “When I was in high school, Colombian tour other people were reading romance novels,” she says. “I was reading the Ted Bundy books.” PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE Forget flak jackets, when singer Manu Below: Thomas Sadoski and Annie Parisse in Gina Chao toured Columbia by train he took Gionfriddo’s play Becky Shaw ��������������������������last month ���������������at Second Stage fire-breathing dragons, an ice museum Theater in New York. PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE and his journalist father to record it all BY DunCan CampBell THE GUARDIan, LONDON Few musicians would allow a journalist to accompany their band through one of the world’s most dangerous countries. Even fewer, one suspects, would be happy about their father being that journalist. But Manu Chao is not just any musician, and his father, Ramon, is not just any journalist — so perhaps it should surprise no one that they ended up together on a legendary 1993 tour of Colombia by train, carrying not just musicians, acrobats and tattooists, but a fire- eating dragon and an ice museum as well. Ramon’s account of that Onstage, talking about journey, The Train of Ice and Fire is published in English on Feb. 9. For Manu’s growing army of admirers, the book provides a THE TRAIN OF ICE AND FIRE magical-realist insight into how ambition and crime his music has developed. For the BY RAMON CHAO tour, Manu and his then band, 256 PAGES Playwright Gina Gionfriddo, who also writes for television’s ‘Law & Order,’ considers herself Mano Negra, took a special train across the country, performing ROUTE PUBLISHING ‘an absolute encyclopedia of true crime’ free at stations for people unable to afford the concerts. BY PATRICIA COHEN A 50-strong Colombian-French to London. To judge by the book, NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK team constructed the train out the father, now 73, seems to have of a functioning locomotive and indulged in more rock ’n’ roll erial killers are really not that a blind date by a well-meaning co-worker, wacky her premise might be.” where the Pulitzer Prize winner Paula decommissioned carriages and off behavior than the son. Although interesting,” Gina Gionfriddo Andrew (Thomas Sadoski). The date is The two met at the O’Neill Playwrights Vogel teaches. they went, ignoring all warnings he had never taken drugs and did “S remarked matter-of-factly. She with Max (David Wilson Barnes), the Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Is playwriting something anyone can of kidnappings and worse. not even smoke cigarettes, he was picking at a salad in the back of a acerbic adopted brother of Andrew’s new Center in Connecticut, which staged a learn? “I think things like structure you Part of the plan was to could not resist some marijuana Midtown restaurant about a block away wife, Suzanna (Emily Bergl). workshop production of her first play, can learn,” she said. “If you have a tin ear pay homage to Gabriel Garcia cake on offer on Christmas Eve. from Second Stage Theater, where she Writing about the debut of Becky Shaw After Ashley, in 2003, and presented for dialogue, though, it’s tough.” Marquez’s One Hundred Years “I was in the clouds and totally has just come from a rehearsal for her this spring at the Humana Festival of New Rapp’s Finer Noble Gases. “Hers was by It is Gionfriddo’s feel for dialogue of Solitude, by taking a slab of out of it for two days. Manu said, new play, Becky Shaw. American Plays at the Actors Theater far my favorite play there,” he said. that has gotten her noticed. Rene Balcer, ice to Aracataca, the town on ‘Honestly, Papa, I can’t leave you Gionfriddo considers herself “an of Louisville, Charles Isherwood of the Gionfriddo first became interested the head writer and executive producer which the novel is based. Ice is a anywhere.’ On another occasion, absolute encyclopedia of true crime” — a New York Times called it “a thoroughly in theater at Georgetown Day School in of Law & Order and its spinoff Law & key theme in the book, from the when I got a tattoo, his reaction handy characteristic for someone who enjoyable play, suspenseful, witty and Washington, where she ended up after Order: Criminal Intent, hired Gionfriddo opening sentence: “Many years was the same. But I think he writes for television’s Law & Order — and infused with an unsettling sense of the a “loathsome” stint in Catholic school. after reading After Ashley. later, as he faced the firing squad, really liked the fact that I came.” in her experienced eye, crimes motivated potential for psychic disaster inherent in Even then the stories that fascinated her “She really has an ear for the dialogue Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to Music runs in the family. by money, power and status are the most almost any close relationship.” were about crime. of everyday Americans and the quirki- remember that distant afternoon Ramon was a child prodigy, a compelling and transgressive. At a recent rehearsal the cast had “When I was in high school, other ness of everyday Americans,” Balcer when his father took him to classically trained pianist who left “I feel we’re so squeamish about class gathered in the third-floor studio at people were reading romance novels; I said, “the kind of people you see being discover ice.” Clearly, the journey Spain to study at the Conservatoire in this country,” she said. “It’s more taboo Second Stage to go over Max and was reading the Ted Bundy books,” she interviewed on Nancy Grace.” As it turns needed someone to write it down. in Paris. “My father thought I than sexuality.” In her new work there is a Becky’s awkward first encounter in the said. out, Balcer has hired a number of play- “What you write must be would be the next Mozart but I crime — a robbery — but social ambition newlyweds’ apartment. Peter Dubois, “I’ve never been sure if it was the wrights, many of them women. “I think accessible to everyone,” Manu wanted to be Cervantes,” he says. provides the engine and the theme. the director, waved a list, compiled by anxiety that violence would be done women write crime better than men do,” told Ramon. “You mustn’t use Did he inspire Manu? “When I was For readers of Victorian literature, Gionfriddo, of 19th-century novels about to me or that I would do violence,” she he said. “Men tend to play it safe, relying too many literary references. 10 or 11, he tried to make me play the name Becky Shaw brings to women trying to push their way into a added, noting that the very thought of on an old-boys’ network. Women feel Your last novel was too ornate. I the piano but I preferred football,” mind another famous social climber: new class or position. He wanted the being locked up in prison could start her freer. They swing for the bleachers.” couldn’t finish it.” says Manu. Thackeray’s Becky Sharp. There are entire cast to have a copy of the list. hyperventilating. If her gender has been a boon on The train traveled through The 1993 tour did, in the lots of Becky Sharp-like characters in “Books about ruin coming to women “That’s the sophisticated explanation,” television crime dramas, it hasn’t helped territory contested by FARC end, split the band, some of 19th-century literature, Gionfriddo says, for jumping their class have been written she added. “I may just be a ghoul.” in the New York theater world, in guerrillas and the army, attracting whom departed before the final and for the most part they are vilified for 200 years,” Dubois explained. Later By the time she went to Barnard Gionfriddo’s view. She, along with dozens the curiosity of both — plus concerts. Manu returned to Paris and punished for refusing to stay in their he said, “I think there’s something really College in New York, she had settled on of other female playwrights, recently spectators in their thousands, and disheartened, and went on to place. Thackeray’s Sharp is described as amazing to get a sense that this story that acting as a career. protested the relatively small number stowaways. Manu was impressed form his new band, Radio Bemba. “monstrous” and “serpentine.” “There’s a we’re telling has a long literary history.” New York offered a welcome if harsh of plays by women that are produced by the resilience of his audience. He nearly recruited a new band need for women to be put in their place” He then talked to the actors about dose of reality. In an acting class the in New York. Producers, directors and In the book, he recounts spending member in Colombia — a street for being too aggressive, Gionfriddo said. the scene. “Fighting is a healthy, living students were lined up and the professors perhaps audiences, she said, seem much time with Bogota’s street kid, Rondelle, who could sing and “People like Becky Sharp and Hedda impulse,” he said. “Suzanna and Max went down the row, declaring what sort more willing to accept unappealing male children: “Life’s hell for them. But dance brilliantly. Gabler are boldly out there, aggressively share that, whereas Andrew sees it as of parts each person could play. “I wasn’t characters than unappealing women.

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