Joel Schechter
THE UN·AMERICAN SATIRE OF DARia Fa
Dario Fo received official recogmtlOn as a subversive
comedian in May 1980, when the United States government refused
to let him perform in New York. The Italian satirist and his wife, ac–
tress Franca Rame, were denied entry visas by the State Department.
Comic monologues performed by the couple in Italy, England,
France, Germany, Canada, Peru, and China for over a million
spectators could not be seen in America. While the State Depart–
ment kept the performers out, their satire has recently entered the
country in the form of dramatic texts. One of Fo's plays,
We Can't
Pay, We Won't Pay!,
was staged in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seat–
tle , New York, and Detroit during the past three years . Another
satire,
Accidental Death of An Anarchist,
had its American premiere in
January 1983, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. A third
political satire,
About Face,
opened at the Yale Repertory Theatre a
few months later .
If
the State Department feared that Fo and Rame's
sense of humor would attract a following, its fears were not wholly
unfounded.
He may be Europe's leading political satirist and the most in–
fluential political playwright since Brecht, but Dario Fo is only
beginning to be known in America. Not only has he yet to arrive
here in person, over thirty of his plays remain unstaged, un–
translated, and unpublished in the United States, despite the recent
productions . The loss is more ours than Fo's . Neglect of his plays,
and our government's refusal to let Fo and Rame perform here,
betray cultural impoverishment and political biases that are
peculiarly American.
Fo himself once observed that when politically uninformed ac–
tors appear in his plays, "a learning process is set in motion." The
political content of the satires-which concern inflation, anarchism,
terrorism, police interrogation, and other humorous subjects - has
Editor's Note:
Accidental Death ofAn Anarchist
was published in English in the Spring
1979 issue of
Theater.
An
adaptation of the same play and a translation of
We Can't
Pay, We Won't Pay!
were published in London by Pluto Plays.
Klaxon, Trumpets and
Raspberries,
retitled
About Face,
was published in the Fall 1983 issue of
Theater.
