JOEL SCHECHTER
113
to be understood before actors can perform them accurately; this
obstacle alone may explain most of the delay in America's reception
of Fo. Also, directors and actors in the United States tend to be box
office conscious, even at subscriber-supported, nonprofit institu–
tions; this militates against strong, political satire and politically
biased presentations that might unsettle the settled, paying sector of
the public.
A few American theaters became interested in staging
Accidental
Death ofAn Anarchist
after it proved to be a box office success in Lon–
don. The play, performed by a socialist theater group called Belt and
Braces, transferred to London's West End and ran there in 1980
through 1981 for over five hundred performances. Suddenly Dario
Fo was discovered by the English-speaking world. It seems he has
commercial potential despite his politics - or perhaps because of
them.
Fo has encountered success before. In 1968 he declared he
would no longer be a "jester of the bourgeoisie," and he gave up a
steady, handsome income as a creator of middle-class comedies in
order to start over again. Since then he and his wife have performed
for factory strikers, students, working class audiences - rarely for the
wealthier sectors of society. Fo's popularity continues today, as he
performs new plays and a one-man show,
Mistero Buffo,
for au–
diences of thousands who fill the stadiums, assembly halls, and cir–
cus tents on his tour circuit. His comedy as playwright and actor ex–
tends the traditions of Italian folk comedy and minstrelsy by using
them for topical social commentary .
Born in 1926 in a small town in Lombardy, Fo comes from a
working class family (his father was a railroad worker). He studied
painting and architecture in Milan , and began writing satirical
sketches in the 1940s . Since then he has created plays with Franca
Rame , and with several collectives, the most recent of which is
La
Comune,
based in Milan. His satires have won Fo enemies as well as
friends. The Italian Communist Party ended two years of support
for him in 1970 because he ridiculed it along with other venerable
institutions such as the Catholic Church, the Christian Democrats,
and the CIA. In 1973 an Italian fascist group abducted and raped
Franca Rame . Fo himself has often been subjected to police harass–
ment and censorship. He once noted that
Accidental Death ofAn Anar–
chist
was so successful in its exposure of state repression that it "pro–
duced a violent reaction in the centers of power.... We were
