Dario Fo
Dario Fo
Dario Fois an Italian actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter and political campaigner of the italian extremist left-wing, recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. "Arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre", much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth24 March 1926
CountryItaly
I am interested, too, in satirical theater, in the grotesque, or even in tragedy at times, but I am mostly comfortable with comedy.
For some time it's been my habit to use images when preparing a speech: rather than write it down, I illustrate it.
I am the jongleur. I leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. I make fun of those in power, and I show you how puffed up and conceited are the big shots who go around making wars in which we are the ones who get slaughtered. I reveal them for what they are. I pull out the plug, and... pssss... they deflate.
I felt like an extraordinary hero. I was only five or six and I had the whole of life in my hands. Even if I had been driving the carriage of the sun I could not have felt any better.
We had extremely democratic town councils in medieval Italy which knew the value of working together, and every now and then, down the centuries, this spirit returns.
Know how to live the time that is given you.
Our homeland is the whole world. Our law is liberty. We have but one thought, revolution in our hearts.
It is extremely dangerous to talk about limits or borders. It is vital, instead, that we remain completely open, that we are always involved, and that we aim to contribute personally in social events.
With comedy I can search for the profound.
It is from him, from Beolco Ruzzante, that I've learned to free myself from conventional literary writing and to express myself with words that you can chew, with unusual sounds, with various techniques of rhythm and breathing, even with the rambling nonsense-speech of the 'grammelot.'
Every artistic expression is either influenced by or adds something to politics.
It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.
For some time its been my habit to use images when preparing a speech: rather than write it down, I illustrate it.
Health and an able body are two jewels.