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'Dario Fo' (born March 24, 1926) is an Italian satirist, playwright, theater director, actor, and composer. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the proletarian classes. He currently owns and operates a theatre company with his wife and leading actress Franca Rame.

Contents

Biography

Early years

Relationship with Franca Rame

1960s and success

1970s

1980s, 1990s and the Nobel Prize

Creative inspiration

Selected works

References

External links

Biography

Early years

Fo was born in Leggiuno-Sangiano, in the province of Varese, near the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore. His father Felice was a station master for the Italian state railway, and the family frequently moved when Felice was transferred to new postings. Felice was also an amateur actor and a socialist. Fo learned storytelling from his maternal grandfather and Lombard fishers and glassblowers.
In 1940 Fo moved to Milan to study architecture at the Brera Art Academy, but World War II intervened. His family was active in anti-fascist resistance and reputedly he helped his father to smuggle refugees and Allied soldiers to Switzerland. Near the end of the war, Fo was conscripted into the army of the Republic of Salò, but he escaped and managed to hide for the remainder of the war.
After the war, Fo continued his architectural studies in Milan. Initially he commuted from Lago Maggiore, but soon his family moved to Milan. There Fo became involved in the ''piccoli teatri'' (''small theatres'') movement, in which he began to present improvised monologues. In 1950 he began to work for Franco Parenti's theater company, and gradually abandoned his work as an assistant architect.

Relationship with Franca Rame

In 1951 Fo met Franca Rame, daughter of a theatrical family, when they were working in the production of revue ''Sette giorni a Milano''. After a slow start, they became engaged. In the same year he was invited to perform a radio play ''Cocorico'' in RAI, Italian national radio. He made 18 satirical monologues where he varied biblical tales to make them political satire. Scandalized authorities cancelled the show.
In 1953 he wrote and directed a satirical play ''Il dito nell'occhio''. After initial success both government and church authorities censored his work and the theater company had trouble finding theaters in which to perform it. The public did appreciate the show.
Franca Rame and Dario Fo were married on June 24, 1954. Fo worked in the Piccolo Teatro in Milan but his satires suffered more censure although they remained popular.
In 1955 Fo and Rame worked in movie production in Rome. Fo became a screenwriter and worked for many productions, including those of Dino De Laurentiis. Their son Jacopo was born on March 31. Rame worked in Teatro Stabile of Bolzano. In 1956 Fo and Rame were together in the Carlo Lizzani's film ''Lo svitato''. Other movies followed.
In 1959 Fo and Rame returned to Milan and founded the ''Compagnia Dario Fo-Franca Rame'' (Dario Fo- Franca Rame Theater Company). Fo wrote scripts, acted, directed, and designed costumes and stage paraphernalia. Rame took care of the administrative jobs. The company débuted in Piccolo Teatro and then left for the first of its annual tours all over Italy.

1960s and success

In 1960 they gained national recognition with ''Gli arcangeli non giocano a flipper'' ("Archangels Don't Play Pinball") in Milan's Teatro Odeon. Other successes followed. In 1961 Fo's plays began to play in Sweden and Poland.
In 1962 Fo wrote and directed a game show ''Canzonissima'' for RAI. Fo used the show to depict lives of commoners and it became a success. However, an episode about a journalist who was killed by Mafia annoyed politicians and Fo and Rame received death threats and were placed under police protection. They left the show when RAI made more cuts to the program. The Italian Actor's Union told its members to refuse to became their replacements. Fo and Rame were effectively banned from RAI for the next 15 years. They continued their work in Teatro Odeon.
In 1962 Fo's play about Christopher Columbus, ''Isabella, Three Tall Ships, and a Con Man'' was subject to violent attacks by fascist groups in Rome. On this occasion it was the Italian Communist Party which provided security for Fo and Rame. This event is recounted by Fo in the prologue of ''Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas''.
''La Signora è da buttare'' (1967) made topical comments on the Vietnam War, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The US government saw it as being disrespectful to President Johnson, and Fo was denied a US visa for years afterwards under the McCarran-Walter Act.
Fo gained international fame with "Archangels Don't Play Pinball" when it was performed in Zagreb in Yugoslavia.
In 1968 Fo and Rame founded ''Associazione Nuova Scena'' theatre collective with movable stages. It toured in Italy. In Milan, it turned an abandoned factory into a theatre. It became a home of another new company, ''Il Capannone di Via Colletta''. The collective had links to the Italian Communist Party, but Fo openly criticized also their methods and policies in his plays. Soon the communist press disliked him as much as they did Catholic one, and many openings were cancelled. Fo had never been a member but the conflict made Rame resign her membership of the party.
Dario Fo withdrew all rights to perform his plays in Czechoslovakia after the Warsaw Pact forces crushed Prague Spring in 1968 as a protest, and refused to accept cuts demanded by Soviet censors. Productions of his plays in the Eastern Block ended.
In 1969 Fo presented for the first time ''Mistero Buffo'' ("Comic Mystery"), a play of monologues based on the mix of medieval plays and topical issues. It was popular and had 5000 performances even in sports arenas. ''Mistero Buffo'' influenced a lot of young actors and authors: it can be considered the foundative moment of what Italians used to call teatro di narrazione, a kind of theatre in which there are no characters playing a dramatic role, a kind of theatre similar to the popular storytelling. The most famous Italian storytellers are Marco Paolini, Laura Curino, Ascanio Celestini, Davide Enia and Andrea Cosentino.

1970s

However, in 1970 Fo and Rame left ''Nuova Scena'' due to political differences. They began their third theatre group, ''Collettivo Teatrale La Commune''. It produced plays based on improvisation about contemporary issues with lots of revisions. ''Accidental Death of an Anarchist'' (1970) criticized abuse of forces of law and order; he wrote it after a terrorist attack on the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan. ''Fedayin'' (1971) was about a volatile situation in Palestine and performers included genuine PLO members. From 1971 to 1985, the group donated part of its income to support strikes of Italian labor organizations.
In 1973 the company moved to Rossini Cinema in Milan. When Fo criticized police in one of his plays, police raids and censorship increased. On March 8, a fascist group kidnapped Franca Rame, torturing and raping her. Rame returned to the stage after two months with new anti-fascist monologues.
Later in that year, the company occupied an abandoned market building in Central Milan and dubbed it the ''Palazzina Liberty''. They opened in September with ''Guerra di popolo in Cile'', a play about a rebellion against Chilean military government. It had been written because of the murder of Salvador Allende. Fo was arrested when he tried to prevent police from stopping the play. The 1974 play ''Can't Pay? Won't Pay!'' was a farce about the self-reduction movement where women (and men) would take what they wanted from markets, only paying what they could afford. In 1975 Fo wrote ''Fanfani rapito'' in support of a referendum for the legalization of abortion. In the same year they visited China. Fo was also nominated for the Nobel prize for the first time.
In 1976 a new RAI director invited Fo to do a new program, ''Il teatro di Dario'' (''Dario's Theatre''). However, when ''Mistero Buffo's'' second version was presented in the TV in 1977, the Vatican described it as "blasphemous" and Italian right-wingers complained. Regardless, Franca Rame received an IDI prize for the best TV actress.
In 1978 Fo made the third version of ''Mistero Buffo''. He also rewrote and directed ''La storia di un soldato'' (''Story of a Soldier''), based on Igor Stravinsky's opera. It was a success. Later he adapted operas from Rossini. He also wrote a play about the murder of Aldo Moro, but it has not been performed publicly.

1980s, 1990s and the Nobel Prize

In 1980 Fo and family founded a retreat, the ''Libera Università di Alcatraz'', in the hills near Gubbio and Perugia. They bought the valley bit by bit. The retreat is currently run by Jacopo Fo.
In 1981 Cambridge's America Repertory Theater invited Fo to perform in the Italian Theatre Festival in New York. The United States Department of State initially refused to grant Fo a visa but agreed to issue a six-day one in 1984 after various US writers protested against the ruling. In 1985 they received another one and performed at Harvard University, Repertory Theater, the New Haven University Repertory Theater, Washington's Kennedy Center, Baltimore's Theatre of Nations and New York's Joyce Theatre.
Despite the acclaim, there were still troubles. In 1983 Italian censors rated ''Coppia Aperta'' forbidden to anyone under 18. During a performance in Argentina, a saboteur threw a tear gas grenade and the further performances were disturbed by youths who threw stones on the windows. Catholics picketed the performance with large religious pictures.
In 1989 he wrote ''Lettera dalla Cina'' in protest of the Tiananmen Massacre. In the same year he was the first Italian to stage a play in the Comédie Française.
In 1981 Fo received a Sonning Prize from Copenhagen University, 1985 a Premio Eduardo Award and in 1986 the Obie Award in New York and in 1987 Agro Dolce Prize.
On July 17, 1995, Fo suffered a stroke and lost most of his sight; Rame subsequently took his place in productions for a period of time. Fo nearly recovered within a year.
On October 9, 1997 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).
In his works Dario Fo has criticized — among others — Catholic policy on abortion, political murders, organized crime, political corruption and the Middle East crisis. His plays often depend on improvisation, commedia dell'arte style. His plays — especially ''Mistero Buffo'' — have been translated to 30 languages and when they are performed outside Italy, they are often modified to reflect local political and other issues.
In 2006, Dario Fo made a failed attempt to run for mayor of Milan, the most economically important city of Italy, finishing second in the primary election held by the centre-left The Union. Fo, who obtained over 20% of votes, was supported by the Communist Refoundation Party.
Fo's wife Franca Rame has been elected as senator for the Italy of Values party in the Italian general election held on April 9 and 10, 2006.

Creative inspiration

Following the performance of Dario Fo's anti-Iraq war play 'Peace Mom' featuring Frances de la Tour as mother Cindy Sheehan, United Kingdom theatre has seen a revival of political satire in the form of farce (particularly in the Edinburgh Festival). This farce generally aims to alert all social classes to political oppression and exploitation rather than specifically targeting the working classes.
Using mainly gritty, blunt theatrical style and the anarchistic stand-up comedy pioneered in the Eighties by British comedians such as Ben Elton and the Young Ones, British drama practitioners now create satirical criticism of the political mainstream in a way terrestrial, cable, and satellite broadcast media would not permit.
In the spirit of the Vision of The Golden Rump in the 1730s, which suggested that the Queen administered an enema to the King, contemporary British playwrights now combine elements of shock horror and juvenile humour with a base of satire to "return theatre to the masses", which is arguably Dario Fo's primary goal. The musical Restart by the North of England's Komedy Kollective is a fine example of the new generation of British theatre inspired by Fo's distinctive satire.

Selected works

''Note: These are the English names of the works''

★ ''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''(1961)

★ ''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)

★ ''All House, Bed, and Church'' (1977)

★ ''The Tale of a Tiger'' (1978)

★ ''Trumpets and Raspberries'' (1981)

★ ''The Open Couple'' (1983)

★ '' (1984)

★ ''One was Nude and One wore Tails'' (1985)

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

★ ''The Zeedonk and the Shoe'' (1988)

★ ''The Pope and the Witch'' (1989)

★ ''A Woman Alone'' (1991)

★ ''The Devil with Boobs'' (1997)

★ ''The First Miracle of the Infant Jesus''

★ ''Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo''

★ ''About Face''

★ ''Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas''

References

★ Concetta D'Angeli - Simone Soriani (eds), ''Coppia d'arte - Dario Fo e Franca Rame'', Pisa, Edizioni Plus, 2006 [1]

★ Tom Behan, ''Dario Fo. Revolutionary Theater'', London, Pluto Press, 2000

★ Joseph Farrell, ''Dario Fo & Franca Rame. Harlequins of the revolution'', Methuen 2001

★ Joseph Farrell - Antonio Scuderi (eds), ''Dario Fo: Stage, Text and Tradition'', Southern Illinois University Press, 2000

★ Tony Mitchell, ''Dario Fo. People's court jester'', London, Methuen, 1999

★ Marisa Pizza, ''La parola, il gesto, l'azione'', Roma, Bulzoni, 1996

★ Paolo Puppa, ''Il teatro di Dario Fo'', Vnezia, Marsilio, 1978

★ Antonio Scuderi, ''Dario Fo and Popular Performance'', Legas 1998

★ Simone Soriani, ''Dario Fo. Dalla commedia al monologo (1959-1969)'', Corazzano (PI), Titivillus, 2007

★ Chiara Valentini, ''La storia di Dario Fo'', Milano, Feltrinelli, 1997

External links

★ Official website of Dario Fo's candidacy as Mayor of Milan

★ Official website of the documentary about Dario Fo's candidacy as Mayor of Milan

★ Nobel laureate page

★ Biography

★ Peace Mom by Dario Fo (performed in London, in December 2005)

★ Restart by Komedy Kollective