Dario Fo (1926–2016) was an Italian avant-garde playwright, painter, manager-director, and actor-mime. This winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997 and Franca Rame—his wife, muse, and leading performer—often faced government censure as a theatrical caricaturist who regularly skewered political leaders with deft dialogue.
Born in Leggiuno-Sangiano, Lombardy, Fo began his career as a stage designer and author of comic monologues. From 1959–68, he ran a small theatre company in Milan with Rame. His reputation as a comic author was established before the abolition of stage censorship in 1962 allowed him to align himself openly with the political left in plays attacking government corruption and bureaucracy.
Fo’s international fame rests chiefly upon the political satire Morte accidentale di un anarchico (1970; Death of an Anarchist, 1979,) wherein a political prisoner falls from a window while in police custody, and the frenetic Non si paya, no si paya (1974; Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay, 1981,) a protest against taxation which achieved popularity in Great Britain during the intense debate over the poll tax. Both use established techniques of farce to advocate a socialist viewpoint.
Tony Mitchell wrote the biography Dario Fo: People’s Court Jester (1984.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Dario Fo
Tidy fees are the most effective remedy, both for the doctor and the patient.
—Dario Fo
Topics: Doctors
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