Dario Fo – författare

Twenty monologues for women Twenty monologues in this volume which range from the deeply serious to the extravagantly comic and accessible to a wide range of audiences"The pieces are comic, grotesque, on purpose. First of all because we women have been crying for two thousand years. So let's laugh now, even at ourselves" - Franca Rame"Set at the point where reality and ideology rub up against each other, [these] monologues are vivid, concise and entertaining comments on the female condition...comic-but-angry, raw-but-precise" - Independent

Mistero Buffo, or The Comic Mysteries, is based on research into mediaeval mystery plays; The Accidental Death of an Anarchist concerns the "accidental" (or not) death of an anarchist railwork who "fell" (or was pushed) to his death from a police headquarters window in 1969; Trumpets and Raspberries is "A deeply subversive farce" (The Guardian) in which the boss of Italy's biggest car manufacturer FIAT, is mistaken for a left wing terrorist.

In its first two years of production in Italy, Dario Fo's notorious Accidental Death of an Anarchist was seen by over half a million people. It has since been performed all over the world, and become a classic of twentieth-century drama. A sharp and hilarious satire on police corruption, it concerns the case of an anarchist railway worker who, in 1969, 'fell' to his death from a police headquarters window. 'I ought to warn you that the author of this sick little play, Dario Fo, has the traditional, irrational hatred of the police common to all narrowminded left-wingers and so I shall, no doubt, be the unwilling butt of endless anti-authoritarian jibes.' (Inspector Bertozzo, Central Italian Police HQ) 'A marvellous concept: a zany political farce.' (Michael Billington) This edition has been adapted by Gavin Richards from Gillian Hanna's translation and features an introduction by Stuart Hood and a preface by Dario Fo.

A triumphant transformation of mediaeval mystery plays into radical political theatre Mistero Buffo, or The Comic Mysteries, recreates the irreverent vitality of the popular mediaeval theatre. It is based on careful research into the work of the strolling players of Italy in the middle ages. Essential to an understanding of the well-springs of Fo's remarkable genius, this is the first translation of the play into English."Fo is the determined enemy of pomp, ceremony and the material aspects of religion but what shines out of this exhilarating show is the love of humanity and truth." (Michael Billington, The Guardian)

Throughout the 1980s, Dario Fo, Italy's best known and most provocative satirical playwright, and his wife Franca Rame, the celebrated actress and feminist, conducted a series of performance-seminars around the world on the subject of acting. In places as diverse as London's Riverside Studios, Rome's Teatro Argentina and Perugia's Free University of Alcatraz, Fo and Rame have revealed to rapt audiences the many facets of the actor's art - his or her 'Tricks of the Trade'. Tracing the life of the comic performer back to the itinerant jongleur and the skillful improvisations of later commedia dell'arte troupes, Fo's genius as both a player and synthesiser of the historical past allows him to resurrect before our eyes and ears a shadow performer upon whom all actors unwittingly base their work. Using mime, masks, pieces of text, dance, action and snatches from songs, Fo and Franca Rame consolidate many months of their lecture demonstrations into a 'Six Day' workshop, a staged demonstration that is also a Fo-on-Fo one-man show. It is released to coincide with the paperback release of Dario Fo's autobiography "My First Seven Years Plus a Few More".

Dario Fo is Italy's leading contemporary playwright and performer, renowned throughout the world for his dazzling radical satires Can't Pay Won't Pay is set in Milan, but "the problems are desperately familiar...Fo-faced farce wears a broad smile and proceeds at breathtaking speed" (Michael Coveney, Financial Times); Elizabeth "It portrays our last Tudor monarch in Fo's characteristically rollicking vein...A triumph for Gillian Hanna as translator" (Marin Hoyle, Financial Times); The Open Couple and An Ordinary Day, written with Franca Rame, deal wittily with the fate of women in a society in which both the social system in which they live and its dominant ideology are shaped by men.

'The quality that makes Fo uniquely powerful ...[is] the ability to wring wild laughter out of insidious corruption' Guardian 'Simon Nye's witty translation updates and relocates the play ...suitably close to contemporary England. Fo is that rare thing, a far-left playwright with a popular, comic touch. And his stinging attack upon the black arts of government cover-up, manipulation and mendacity could not be more timely' Evening Standard In its first two years of production, Dario Fo's controversial farce, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was seen by over half a million people. It has since been performed all over the world and is widely recognised as a classic of modern drama. A sharp and hilarious satire on political corruption, it concerns the case of an anarchist railway worker who, in 1969, 'fell' to his death from a police headquarters window. This version of the play was premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in February 2003. Commentary and notes by Joseph Farrell.

Dario Fo's classic farce Accidental Death of an Anarchist was a sensation when it premiered in Italy in 1970. Based on the story of a political activist who "fell" to his death from the window of a police station, the original production was seen by over half a million people. This incisive satire on police corruption, media manipulation and political shenanigans is here translated by Simon Nye.This version of Accidental Death of an Anarchist premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London in February 2003. "A marvellous concept: a zany political farce..." Michael Billington, Guardian"Fo's play absorbs social indignation into mainstream Italian comedy" The Times

Winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature, Dario Fo is one of the world's most important contemporary playwrights, forging subversive comedy, clowning, unusual linguistic experimentation, and brilliant playwriting into a comedy of complete originality. In a first-person monologue that bends and mutates language and historical fact, Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas is a brilliant, vividly imagined retelling of Christopher Columbus's voyage to America. Told by a last-minute conscript assigned to clean the shipboard pig stalls, who goes on to be adopted by a tribe of Indians and help them fight conquistadors, it posits a riotous alternate history in which the dynamics between native and white, male and female, history and comedy are never what they seem.

An uproarious new version of Dario Fo's frenetic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! which, although set in Italy, has an all too familiar ring to it. Housewives Antonia and Margherita, fed up with high prices in the supermarket, take matters into their own hands and start shoplifting. Keen to keep their light-fingered antics from their husbands, Giovanni and Luigi - not to mention the police - the women are forced to resort to more and more inventive hiding places, and more and more elaborate cover stories, in this legendary comedy. Nobel prize winner Dario Fo is Italy's leading contemporary playwright, renowned for his hilarious satires including Accidental Death of an Anarchist. He has re-written his classic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! to take into account the global banking crisis and this translation, by world-leading Fo scholar Joseph Farrell, hints at UK current affairs too, including the credit crunch and MPs' expenses scandal. Although first written in 1970, this updated farce is still very relevant to today's state of affairs.

'We know all too well that we're up to our necks in the shit, and it is for this very reason that we walk with our heads held high!'An irrepressible fraudster known only as the Maniac is brought into Police Headquarters just as the officers are preparing for a judicial review of the recent 'accidental' death of a suspect in custody.Outwitting his captors, the Maniac dupes them into performing a farcical recreation of the incident, exposing the absurd corruption and terrifying idiocy at the heart of the system.Dario Fo and Franca Rame's riotous satire has been widely performed around the world since its premiere in 1970. Tom Basden's acclaimed adaptation was first performed at Sheffield Theatres in 2022, directed by Daniel Raggett, and starring Daniel Rigby as the Maniac.The production transferred to the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in 2023, before moving to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London's West End.

"Adapted by Stephen Stenning Millionaire media boss, Diana Forbes-McKaye, is kidnapped - but this ruthless magnate proves more resourceful than her clumsy abductors. Are things what they seem? Who is in charge? Who masterminded the abduction? Who has the television rights to this premier media event? Into this cocktail of chaotic double-dealing, Fo adds a gun-toting priest, a deranged altar boy, a kidnapper hiding in the fridge, pyromania and an explosive climax. "