International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Dario Fo is an actor, director, and playwright of international fame whose artistic career is characterized by his advocacy of civil, democratic, and workers' rights. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Born on March 24, 1926 in San Giano, in the province of Varese, he studied at the Brera Academy in Milan and wrote satirical texts for radio, television, and cinema. Italian public television (RAI) censored his work and that of his wife, actress Franca Rame, so heavily that they were forced to turn to theater, in many cases performing in factories and public places ( Case del popolo ) to appeal to popular audiences. Fo drew on the tradition of commedia dell'arte , writing pieces on social and political issues that had great impact. In Mistero Buffo , a solo piece, he used a new theatrical language, gramelot , which was made up of words that resemble (but do not actually correspond to) many northern Italian dialects. His plays have been defined as narrative theater. In the 1970s Fo and Rame founded La Comune, an artistic and political collective that sided with the new left and staged dramas dealing with political issues, such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist ( Morte accidentale di un anarchico , 1970), which focused on the recent supposedly accidental death of anarchist activist Giuseppe Pinelli . Fo's theater pieces generally center on characters from ... log in or subscribe to read full text