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The first political biography of Europe's leading radical playwright and winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature.
A collection of talks, workshops, lectures and conference pieces ... which were recorded at the time before being written by Fo's wife and collaborator Franca Rame (from introduction).
Joseph Farrell and Antonio Scuderi present an international collection of essays reevaluating the multifaceted performance art of Nobel laureate Dario Fo. The contributors, all of whom either have previously published on Fo or have worked with him, are the major Dario Fo scholars of three continents. Going beyond the Marxist criticism of the 1970s and 1980s, the editors and contributors try to establish an appropriate language in which to debate Fo's theater. They seek to identify the core of Fo's work, the material that will be of lasting value. This involves locating Fo in history, examining the nature of his development through successive phases, incorporating his politics into a wider framework of radical dissent, and setting his theatrical achievements in a context and a tradition. The essays cover every aspect of Dario Fo: as actor, playwright, performer, and songwriter. They also provide the historical background of Fo's theater, as well as an in-depth analyses of specific works and the contribution of Franca Rame.
Dario Fo, actor, playwright, theatre director, stage designer, political activist, artist and author who, having attained international fame in theatre, produced the first of his six novels at the age of 88 -- was there any limit to his versatile genius? He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, and works such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist or Can't Pay? Won't Pay secured his reputation as the outstanding political playwright of his age. Unlike other writers of a similar mind, Fo's chosen genre was farce, so his drama is a uniquely engaging mixture of laughter and anger. In 1954 he married Franca Rame, a member of a family-company of touring players. The personal and profes...
The first and only full-length critical study of Dario Fo, the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature Winner This book, now extensively rewritten and updated, remains the only full-length critical study to cover various phases of Dario Fo's theatrical career. It looks at Fo's political influences and also the influence on his work of various theatrical motifs, including the great clown traditions which stretch back to the middle ages. The political work of Dario Fo and his wife/collaborator Franca Rame is charted from the 1960s up to the present to give the reader clear insight into this playwright/performer's unique literary and theatrical strengths. Each of Fo's plays and productions is discussed at length and the author has included an extensive and updated bibliography which includes full production details, quotes and writings about Fo. Always a popular performer in his native Italy, Fo has been one of the world's most performed dramatists. In the author's words: he is the "people's court jester".
In honoring for the first time a writer who is also an actor and a clown, the Swedish Academy expanded the officially recognized boundaries of literature to include the language of the body and the muscular truth of slapstick.".
In the official citation explaining the decision to award the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature to Dario Fo, the Swedish Royal Academy stated that he had emulated the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden. It went on to add that with a blend of laughter and gravity, he opens our eyes to abuses and injustices in society: Fo is an extremely serious satirist. Since the award of the Nobel prize, Dario Fo has never stopped writing, performing and painting. He was deeply affected by the death of his wife Franca Rame and has dedicated works to her.
A great coming-of-age novel, My First Seven Years (plus a few more) is Dario Fo's fantastic fictionalised memoir of his formative years, following his railwayman father around the various villages on the shores of Lago Maggiore in Northern Italy where they lived. Born in 1926 and growing up between the wars, Fo witnessed at close hand the struggles between Fascists and Partisans in the mountainous north. The novel is filled with the anecdotes, characters and sketches that were the inspiration for the creative genius of this winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1997). Above all it is a book filled with the characteristic vitality and humour that springs from all his of his written work. More than just a memoir, My First Seven Years is a work of literature that follows in a great line of imaginative childhood accounts, such as Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, through, Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo stories.