Dario Fo

Lore & Background

Fo was born at Sangiano in Lombardy's Province of Varese, near the eastern shore of Lake Maggiore. His father, Felice, was a socialist station master and amateur actor; his mother, Pina Rota Fo, wrote a book of reminiscences. Fo learned storytelling from his maternal grandfather and Lombard fishers and glassblowers.

During World War II, at age 16, Fo was drafted into Mussolini's fascist army. He later claimed to have secretly helped his father smuggle refugees and Allied soldiers to Switzerland by disguising them as Lombard peasants. However, his statements were widely denied by the testimonies of both partisans and his fascist comrades, as well as by a sentence of the court of Varese on 15 February 1979.

After the war, Fo studied at the Brera Academy and Politecnico di Milano but left before his final examinations after a nervous breakdown. He began to paint and became involved in the piccoli teatri movement, presenting improvised monologues. He considered his artistic influences to include Beolco, Brecht, Chekhov, De Filippo, Gramsci, Mayakovsky, Molière, Shaw, and Strehler.

Reader's Guide

Fo's significance lies in his fusion of medieval jester traditions with modern political critique, earning him the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy praised him as a writer 'who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.' His solo work Mistero Buffo, performed over 30 years across Europe, Asia, Canada, and Latin America, was denounced by Cardinal Ugo Poletti, Cardinal Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, as 'the most blasphemous show in the history of television.' His play Can't Pay?

Won't Pay! has passed into the English language and is described as capturing 'something universal in actions and reactions of the working class.' In the 2010s, Fo became the main ideologue of the Five Star Movement, the anti-establishment party led by Beppe Grillo, often referred to by its members as 'the Master.' His work of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is peppered with criticisms of assassinations, corruption, organised crime, racism, Roman Catholic theology, and war. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, he lampooned Forza Italia and Silvio Berlusconi, and in the 2010s his targets included the banks amid the European sovereign-debt crisis. Fo was an atheist and owned and operated a theatre company.

Did You Know?

• Fo's first radio series, Poer nano, was cancelled by authorities after scandalising them with twisted Shakespearean tales, including a Hamlet where the titular character kills his father to continue an affair with his mother.
• Fo met his wife Franca Rame when they were working in the revue Sette giorni a Milano; they married on 24 June 1954.