About the Book:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

For over three decades Dario Fo was the world's most performed living playwright and Europe's leading radical dramatist. A major figure in Twentieth Century Italian drama as an actor, director and author of over 60 plays, he was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 71 for his contributions as a writer, actor and mime artist over half a century. It is also the first time that the Nobel for the literary arts has been awarded to an actor.

A controversial figure, he is a rarity – a committed political activist with a sense of humour. The Nobel Prize committee said he "emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden". In this political biography of Dario Fo, author Tom Behan traces Fo's life and work from his beginnings in cabaret and mime in postwar Italy and his early writings for television and radio, to the development of his political ideas and the influence of his plays both inside and outside Italy.

Tom Behan broadens his study to examine the importance of Dario Fo's theatre and explores the relationship between mass leftwing movements and Fo's activities as playwright and performer. To illustrate these links, Behan makes a detailed analysis of the key themes in Fo's plays – state repression in The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, a consumer revolt in We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay, the tragedy of leftwing terrorism in Trumpets and Raspberries, and the anti-Clerical satire of Mistero Buffo.

What people say:

"Behan.... has written the first political biography of Dario Fo....Chapters 1, 2, and 6 provide biographical information about Fo, necessarily intermixed with background on Italy's post-war leftist political movements. Fo's greatest period – from 1968, when he broke with the commercial theater, until the late 1970's, when leftist movements began to wane – is recounted in particular detail. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 analyze (mostly in political terms) his most frequently performed theater pieces, ... Behan is unusually qualified for this undertaking. Recommended for collections supporting advanced study in either modern Italian politics or political theater...." — Library Journal

"..reveals much about Fo's political and theatrical life, ..." — Kirkus Reviews

"There are few in-depth studies of Fo available in English, and this book is a welcome addition ... Behan traces Fo's career in a chronological fashion, from his initial involvement with "legitimate" theater and television, to his alternative theater groups and his valorization by middle-class audiences and high-cultural entities alike (Fo received the Nobel Prize in 1997). The descriptions and analyses of Italian politics are especially well done." — CHOICE

About the Author:

Tom Behan (1957-2010) was Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He was also an academic expert on Italian organized crime and the author of a study of the Nobel prizewinning Italian playwright, Dario Fo: Revolutionary History.

Dario Fo (1926-2016) was a major figure in Twentieth Century Italian drama as an actor, director and author of over 60 plays. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the working classes. His work is characterized by criticism of organized crime, political corruption, political assassination, the doctrine of the Catholic Church and the conflict in the Middle East. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1997 was awarded to Dario Fo "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden". It is also the first time that the Nobel for the literary arts has been awarded to an actor.