Dario Fo

Dario Fo
Fo at the Venice Film Festival, 1985
Dario Fo
Born	Dario Luigi Angelo Fo 24 3, 1926
Birthplace	Sangiano, Kingdom of Italy
Died	Template:Death date and age Milan, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, political campaigner
Known for	Mistero Buffo, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Can't Pay? Won't Pay!, Nobel Prize in Literature (1997)
Spouse(s)	Franca Rame
Awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (1997), Obie Award (1987)
Website	[http://www.dariofo.it/ Official site]

Dario Luigi Angelo Fo (24 March 1926 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, and political campaigner who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Fo created a body of work rooted in the traditions of medieval giullari (strolling players) and commedia dell'arte, fusing improvisation, physical comedy, and pointed political satire into a theatrical form that was performed across the world. His plays were translated into thirty languages and staged in countries ranging from Argentina and India to South Korea and the United States. The Swedish Academy, in awarding him the Nobel Prize, praised Fo as a writer "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden". His solo masterwork, Mistero Buffo, performed over a thirty-year period across Europe, Asia, Canada, and Latin America, became one of the most controversial and popular spectacles in postwar European theatre. During his lifetime, he was described as "arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre".

Early Life

Dario Fo was born on 24 March 1926 in Sangiano, a small village near Lake Maggiore in the Province of Varese, in what was then the Kingdom of Italy. He grew up in an environment shaped by the oral storytelling traditions of the region's working-class and rural communities. His father, Felice Fo, was a railway station master, and the family moved between several small towns in Lombardy during Dario's youth. The storytelling culture of local fishermen, glassblowers, and smugglers left a deep impression on the young Fo, and he would later draw upon these vernacular narrative traditions in constructing the improvisatory style for which he became known.

During the Second World War, Fo's family was involved in aiding the anti-fascist resistance. After the war, Fo moved to Milan, where he enrolled at the Brera Academy to study art and architecture. His early artistic training in the visual arts would prove influential throughout his theatrical career; Fo designed his own sets and costumes for many productions and was an accomplished painter and illustrator throughout his life.

It was in Milan that Fo began to develop his interest in theatre, initially performing comic monologues and sketches that drew on the narrative traditions of his upbringing and the improvisational methods of the commedia dell'arte. These early experiences in postwar Milan's vibrant cultural scene set the stage for a career that would combine visual artistry, physical performance, and literary invention in a manner that defied easy categorisation.

Education

Fo studied architecture and art at the Brera Academy in Milan and subsequently attended the Politecnico di Milano. His formal training in the visual arts informed the distinctive visual dimension of his theatrical productions, in which he served not only as writer and performer but also as stage designer. Though he did not complete a degree in architecture, the technical and aesthetic discipline of his studies provided a foundation for his later work in set design and illustration.

Career

Early Theatre and Television Work

Fo began his theatrical career in the late 1940s and early 1950s, initially writing and performing satirical monologues and sketches for small Milanese stages and for Italian radio and television. His early work combined physical comedy, linguistic virtuosity, and social observation, drawing on the traditions of commedia dell'arte and the storytelling customs of his native Lombardy.

In 1954, Fo married the actress and playwright Franca Rame, who became his lifelong artistic collaborator. Together they formed a theatre company that would become one of the most significant forces in Italian theatre for the next half-century. Rame was both co-author and leading performer in many of Fo's works, and the partnership between the two was central to the development and staging of his plays.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Fo wrote a number of farces and comedies for conventional Italian theatre stages. Among the notable early works was Archangels Don't Play Pinball (Gli arcangeli non giocano a flipper), a three-act farce that blended humour with political satire and established several of the themes and techniques that would recur throughout his career. Fo's early plays showed a consistent concern with the lives and language of ordinary people, rendered through the lens of comic exaggeration and theatrical inventiveness.

Political Theatre and the 1960s–1970s

By the mid-1960s, Fo had moved away from mainstream commercial theatre and toward an explicitly political theatrical practice. Influenced by the social upheavals of the era, he and Rame founded a series of independent theatre companies that performed in unconventional spaces—factories, community halls, occupied buildings—in an effort to reach working-class audiences who were not served by the established Italian theatrical institutions.

Fo's work of this period was characterised by direct engagement with contemporary political events in Italy and beyond. His plays addressed themes of corruption, state violence, organised crime, racism, and the politics of the Roman Catholic Church. He was described as Italy's foremost practitioner of agit-prop theatre, and was recognised as "one of the world's most versatile theatrical talents: actor, director" and playwright.

One of Fo's most celebrated and enduring works from this period was Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Morte accidentale di un anarchico), written in 1970. The play was inspired by the death of the anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli, who fell from a window at Milan police headquarters during interrogation in connection with the Piazza Fontana bombing of 1969. Through farcical comedy and satirical dialogue, the play explored themes of state corruption, police brutality, and the manipulation of public information. It became one of Fo's most frequently performed works worldwide.

Another major work from this era was Can't Pay? Won't Pay! (Non Si Paga! Non Si Paga!), first performed in 1974. The play depicted working-class women who, faced with escalating prices, resort to shoplifting and then must hide their actions from their husbands. Described as capturing "something universal in actions and reactions of the working class", the play's English-language title passed into common usage as a political slogan.

Throughout the 1970s, Fo and Rame faced significant opposition from Italian authorities. Their performances were frequently censored, raided by police, or banned outright. The couple were subjected to political harassment and, in 1973, Rame was kidnapped and assaulted in an attack later linked to far-right elements with connections to elements of the Italian security services. These experiences reinforced Fo's commitment to political theatre and deepened the combative tone of his work.

Mistero Buffo

Mistero Buffo (Comic Mystery), first performed in 1969 and subsequently revised and performed by Fo over a period of more than thirty years, became his most famous solo work and one of the defining theatrical events of the late twentieth century. The piece consisted of a series of monologues and sketches drawn from medieval mystery plays, biblical narratives, and folk traditions, performed by Fo alone on a bare stage, using only his voice, body, and a technique he termed grammelot—a form of gibberish that mimicked the sounds and rhythms of various languages and dialects to convey meaning through intonation, gesture, and context rather than literal words.

The work was performed across Europe, Asia, Canada, and Latin America, and was broadcast on Italian television, where it attracted large audiences and considerable controversy. Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the Cardinal Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, denounced the work as "the most blasphemous show in the history of television". The controversy surrounding Mistero Buffo reflected broader tensions between Fo's theatrical practice—rooted in the irreverent, subversive traditions of medieval popular performance—and the established institutions of Italian religious and political authority.

A new adaptation of Mistero Buffo was staged in Glasgow in 2025, marking its debut in the Scots language, demonstrating the work's continued relevance and adaptability across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Later Career: 1990s–2010s

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Fo continued to write and perform prolifically, adapting his satirical focus to the changing Italian political landscape. He directed sustained satirical criticism at Forza Italia and its leader Silvio Berlusconi, whose control of Italian media and political institutions provided Fo with abundant material. The plays and monologues of this period addressed themes of media concentration, political corruption, and the erosion of democratic norms in Italian public life.

In the 2010s, Fo broadened his satirical targets to include the European banking system and the effects of the European sovereign-debt crisis on ordinary citizens.

During this period, Fo became closely associated with the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle), the anti-establishment political party led by the comedian and activist Beppe Grillo. Fo was described as the movement's main ideologue and was often referred to by its members as "the Master". His involvement with the Five Star Movement reflected his longstanding commitment to challenging established political structures, though the alliance also drew scrutiny and debate within Italian intellectual and political circles.

Fo also continued his work as a visual artist and painter throughout his later years, exhibiting his paintings and illustrations in galleries across Italy and internationally. His visual art, like his theatre, combined political commentary with exuberant stylistic inventiveness.

Environmentalism

In addition to his theatrical and political work, Fo addressed environmental themes in his later career. His work The Postponed Apocalypse (L'apocalisse rimandata) explored environmental issues and reflected his concern for ecological degradation.

Personal Life

Fo married the actress and writer Franca Rame in 1954. The couple's partnership was both personal and professional, with Rame serving as co-author, performer, and collaborator in many of Fo's major works over more than five decades. Rame herself was a significant theatrical figure in her own right, and the couple's artistic collaboration was central to the development of their shared body of work. Rame died on 29 May 2013.

Fo was an atheist. His rejection of religious authority was a consistent theme in his theatrical work, most notably in Mistero Buffo, which drew upon biblical and religious narratives but presented them through a subversive, irreverent lens that challenged the authority of the institutional Church.

In his later years, Fo remained active as a writer, performer, painter, and political commentator, continuing to produce new work well into his eighties. He died in Milan on 13 October 2016, at the age of ninety.

Recognition

Fo's most significant honour was the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to him in 1997 by the Swedish Academy. The prize committee praised him as a writer "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden". The award marked what was described as "the international acknowledgment of Fo as a major figure in twentieth-century world theatre". The decision was not without controversy; some literary critics and commentators questioned whether a performer and playwright whose work depended heavily on improvisation and live performance should receive a prize traditionally associated with literary achievement in the conventional sense.

In 1987, Fo received an Obie Award for his work performed in the United States. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

His plays were translated into thirty languages and performed in countries spanning every inhabited continent, including Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, India, Iran, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Yugoslavia.

In 2025 and 2026, approaching the centenary of Fo's birth, a programme of celebrations was organised beginning in Umbria, with events presented in Perugia and other Italian cities to honour his legacy.

Legacy

Fo's influence on twentieth and twenty-first century theatre is extensive. His recovery and reinvention of medieval and early modern popular theatrical forms—particularly the traditions of the giullari and commedia dell'arte—demonstrated that pre-literary, improvisatory, and physically expressive modes of performance could be vehicles for complex political and social commentary in the modern era. His work challenged conventional boundaries between high and popular art, and between theatre and political activism.

The title of Can't Pay? Won't Pay! entered the English language as a political slogan, used in campaigns against taxation and economic injustice, particularly during the poll tax protests in the United Kingdom. Accidental Death of an Anarchist remained a staple of theatre repertoires worldwide and continued to be revived in professional and amateur productions decades after its premiere.

Fo's theatrical technique, particularly his use of grammelot and his ability to hold an audience through solo performance on a bare stage, influenced generations of performers and directors. His insistence on the actor's body and voice as the primary instruments of theatrical expression, rather than elaborate staging or technology, offered an alternative model for theatre-making that was adopted and adapted by practitioners around the world.

His engagement with political movements, from the Italian left in the 1960s and 1970s to the Five Star Movement in the 2010s, reflected a consistent belief in theatre as an instrument of social and political change. While this stance brought him both acclaim and criticism, it ensured that his work remained connected to the lived experiences and political struggles of the communities for which he performed.

The centenary of Fo's birth, approaching in 2026, has been marked by renewed attention to his body of work, with commemorative events, new productions, and scholarly reassessments taking place across Italy and internationally. New adaptations, such as the 2025 Scots-language production of Mistero Buffo in Glasgow, attest to the continuing vitality and adaptability of his theatrical legacy.