Dario Fo

From Philosopedia

Fo, Dario (24 Mar 1926 - )

Fo is a playwright, director, composer, stage and costume designer, and in 1997 was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He is the son of Felice Fo, a socialist station master and actor in an amateur theatre company, and Pina Rota, author of the autobiographical Il paese delle rane. Born in San Giano, a small town on Lago Maggiore in the Province of Varies, he learned the rudiments of narrative rhythm by listening on vacations to his maternal grandfather, a farmer who took Fo with him on a horse-drawn wagon to sell his produce and tell his customers satirical and timely stories. His father’s job changed often, necessitating frequent moves, and Fo liked to sit in taverns or the piazza, listening to the fisherman and glass-blowers swap tall tales steeped in pungent political satire in the oral tradition of the fabulator e. In 1940 he moved to Milan, studying at the Brera Art Academy but left before completing the final few exams.

Conscripted into the army of the Salo Republic, he managed to escape, hiding in an attic storeroom. His parents were active in the resistance movement, his father helping smuggle Jewish scientists and escaped British prisoners of war into Switzerland by train, his mother caring for wounded partisans. To help her husband put their three children through college, his wife worked as a shirtmaker.

After the war, Italian theatre developed piccoli teatri (small theatres) that played a key role in developing the idea of a “popular stage.” Fo, unable to afford a seat, stood through many of the performances. His interest in drama continued, but while working as decorator and assistant architect he studied architecture, becoming known as a person who could tell tales as tall as those he had heard in his childhood.

In 1950 Franco Parenti heard his comical rendering of the parable of Cain and Abel, a satire in which the Cain, poer nano (poor little Cain), is depicted as a miserable fool but not evil. Every time Cain tries to mimic the blond blue-eyed Abel he gets into trouble. So enduring one disaster after another he goes crazy and, what else, kills the splendid Abel. Parenti enthusiastically invited Fo to join his theatre company. He also developed grotesque renditions of the stories of Samson and Delilah, Abraham and Isaac, Romeo and Juliet, Moses, Othello, Rigoletto, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King David, Nero, and others—when producers finally caught on to his monologues’ social and political satire, they censured them.

In 1951, he switched to a revue, Sette giorni a Milano, describing meeting Franca, who became his leading actress, and this resulted in his becoming a celebrity with his own show on Italian national radio. The two married in Milan’s Saint Ambrose Basilica, but signs on church doors of that period exhorted parishioners not to see his Il ditto nel’occhio (1953), the first satirical post-war revue, one that sparked both approval and controversy as well as leading to difficulty in finding theatres for future productions. Controversy followed the two during their forty-five years together in theatre. She became administrator and organizer for the Fo-Rame Company, which in 1959 was known as being a radical theatre company that produced populist plays using farce, slapstick, and surrealism.

The two presented Canzonissima, a controversial television show built around the national lottery. Italian TV was introduced to portrayals of the lives and difficulties of common people; e.g., the work-related illness of a signal woman; bricklayers that fall to their death from scaffolding; a sketch with a Mafia theme about a murdered journalist (resulting in Fo and his wife’s receiving death threats delivered in miniature, wooden coffins and the entire family’s being placed under police protection. The Fos were ordered to pay several billion liras in damages, and for fifteen years they were banned by RAI from participating in programs or commercials on the state-owned national radio or television. Meanwhile, thousands of letters and telegrams in support of the Fos were received by RAI, which could find no replacements.

Isabella, tre caravelle e un cacciaballe opened the 1963-1964 Odeon Theatre’s program in Milan. It is about the court of Isabella of Castille, the discovery of America, and the ethnic cleansing of Spain’s Arabs and Jews. Because it exposed schoolbook history and militarist and patriotic rhetoric, the work was attacked by rightwing groups. Fo and his wife were assaulted upon leaving the Valle Theatre in Rome, and only through the presence of groups of militant workers from the Italian Communist Party could the performances continue.

In 1967 following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Fo withdrew permission for his plays to be staged in Czech theatres, refused cuts proposed by Soviet censors in a play scheduled to open at a Soviet theatre, and found all his work stopped in the Soviet Union.

In 1968-1969, the two disbanded their company and established an independent theatre collective, the Associazione Nuovo Scene, composed of more than thirty young technicians, actors, and actresses that organized in three groups to tour Italy before working class audiences. A 1969 play’s expressed critique of Stalinism and of the social democratic position of the Italian Communist Party led to the tour’s being sabotaged—Franca returned her Party card to its secretary Enrico Berlinguer, but Dario was never a member. Their Mistero buffo enjoyed over five thousand performances, and it had to be staged at sports arenas to hold the large numbers who came to hear blatant allusions to the feminine genitalia. Because of political differences, the two left Nuovo Scene for Collettivo Teatrale La Comune, producing Vorrei morire anche stasera se dovessi sapere che non è servito niente, about the Italian and Palestinian resistance.

A 1971 play, Fedayin, was staged with ten authentic Palestinian freedom fighters—Franca herself fetched fedayeen in Lebanese training camps with the help of the Popular Democratic Front.

From 1971 to 1985 the La Comune collective staged hundreds of performances during the economic crisis, donating the revenues to the workers, but the owner refused to renew their contract when it expired. Undeterred, they and their colleagues rented the Rossini Cinema on the outskirts of Milan, finding various acts of repression by the police as well as efforts at censorship. When a group of fascists kidnapped, tortured, and raped Franca Rame, as a punishment for the Fos’ political activism (particularly a work about prisons), outcries of indignation and support appeared throughout Italy. Two months after the rape, Franc returned to perform in Basta con i fascisti, a slide presentation with monologues by Fo-Rame and Lanfranco Binni. It was aimed for young people and addressed the cultural and political presence of fascism within the Italian state. Fanfani rap ito, written in four days in support of the campaign for a referendum for the legalization of abortion, had both supporters and detractors.

In 1975 La Comune visited the People’s Republic of China for one month. A 1975-1976 play concerned the drug fad that was making headway in Italy.

In 1976 Dario and Franca were invited to return to RAI after fifteen years—the political right and the Church complained loudly. In 1980 Franca, Dario, and their son Jacopo founded the Libera Università di Alcatraz, a cultural and agricultural retreat and study centre located in the hills between Gubbio and Perugia. By buying up, little by little, 3 700 000 square metres of forest (that otherwise would have been felled) and olive groves, the Fos prevented the destruction of a beautiful valley. They also restored eleven ancient and abandoned farmhouses and medieval towers. Alcatraz has become a gathering place for various artists and cultural groups—including Sergio Angese, Stefano Benni, Dacia Maraini, Milo Manara, Andrea Pazienza, Elena Cranco—who hold workshops in theatre, cartoon drawing, dance, writing, psychophysical techniques, psychology, and craftsmanship. Alcatraz also arranged educational programs and summer camps for young people, social outcasts, and persons with handicaps. The activities at the center include equine therapy, comic therapy, nature walks, and pool swimming including a swimming school. In addition, it offers natural gardening, an ecological restaurant and a facility to preserve organically grown fruit and produce. The center has had more than 3000 guests and is directed by Jacopo Fo.

In Argentina, during a performance of Tutta casa, letto e chiesa and Mistero buffo, a youth threw a military tear-gas grenade into the theatre. It exploded, creating panic among the audience of well over 1000 persons. Every evening throughout the stay in Argentina, young and not-so-young fascists in black leather jackets threw stones at the windows of the theatre while tens of policemen watched complacently. Windows up to the third floor were broken. Meanwhile, groups of Catholics (instigated by fiery press articles by the Bishop of Buenos Aires, written before the arrival of the company), carrying oversized images of Jesus on their chests, prayed in the lobby of the theatre. Others interrupted the performances with shouts every time the word "pope" was mentioned.

When the Fos were invited to participate at the Italian Theatre Festival in New York, the Department of State denied them entry visas. As a result, a large group of U.S. artists and intellectuals (including Norman Mailer, Eve Merriam, Arthur Miller, Martin Scorese, Ellen Stewart, and Sol Yurrick) organized a protest against the ruling. When Joseph Papp invited them to stage a production at New York’s Public Theatre, the State Department again denied them entry. However, when American producer Alexander Cohen staged a Broadway production at the Belasco Theatre of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, with adaptations by Richard Nelsan, The State Department—after personal intervention by President Reagan, to the surprise of liberals—granted Fo and Rame a limited, six-day entry visa. Finally granted a normal entry visa, they performed Mistero buffo and Tutta casa, letto e chiesa at Harvard’s American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, at New Haven University’s Repertory Theatre, at Washington's Kennedy Center, at Baltimore's Theater of Nations, and at New York’s Joyce Theater. They held a five-day theatre seminar at New York University as well at various workshops. The open-ended structure of Mistero buffo allows it to evolve over the years, permitting Fo to address issues he deems noteworthy.

Sitti! Stiamo precipitando! is a comic-grotesque farce about AIDS. Sesso? Grazie, tanto per gradire!—written in 1994-1995 by Franca, Jacopo, and Dario—is based on Jacopo’s book, Lo zen e l'arte di scopare (more than 300 000 copies sold), illustrates how we are kept in the dark about sex when we grow up, thinking that sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality, is something indecent. Initially it was banned but, after several months of press campaigns and litigation, the ban was dropped and the play was described as “brimming with profound maternal love and therefore recommended to minors.”

For a time in the 1990s Dario lost 80% of his sight because of cerebral ischaemia, but eventually he recovered and France gave him a computerized typewriter—he refuses to use a computer. The Fos’ work has been played throughout the world, has the distinction of being loved and hated everywhere, has been deconstructed by the academics and the non-academics.

But on 9 October 1997, Fo received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Those in the humanistic cognoscenti were elated; others were nonplused at the Swedish Academy’s decision. In September 2001 the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened its festival with Fo’s one-man play Johan Padan, recounting the journey of a 15th-century John Doe from Europe to the New World. During the festival, Fo and his wife appeared in his comic Mistero Buffo and Ms. Rame starred in Sex? Thanks, Don’t Mind If I Do!, a work written by her, Mr. Fo, and their son Jacopo Fo.

Selected Works, English Titles

Archangels Don't Play Pinball (1959)

He Had Two Pistols with White and Black Eyes (1960)

He Who Steals a Foot is Lucky in Love (1961)

Isabella, Three Tall Ships, and a Con Man (1963)

Mistero Buffo (Comic Mystery 1969)

The Worker Knows 300 Words, the Boss 1000, That's Why He's the Boss (1969)

Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970)

Fedayin (1971)

We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! (Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!) (aka Can't Pay? Won't Pay!) (1974)

Mama's Marijuana is the Best (1976)

All House, Bed, and Church (1977)

The Tale of a Tiger (1978)

Trumpets and Raspberries (1981)

The Open Couple (1983)

Elizabeth: Almost by Chance a Woman (1984)

One was Nude and One wore Tails (1985)

Abducting Diana (1986) - Adapted to English in 1996 by Stephen Stenning

The Tricks of the Trade (Manuale minimo dell'attore) [1987] (1991)[3]

The Zeedonk and the Shoe (1988)

The Pope and the Witch (1989)

A Woman Alone (1991)

Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas (1992)

The Devil with Boobs (1997)

The First Miracle of the Infant Jesus

Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo

About Face

The Virtuous Burglar

(CA; E; The Wall Street Journal, 13 Oct 1997; WAS}