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We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!
We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!
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Author: Dario Fo Translated by: Ron Jenkins Publisher: Samuel French Format: Softcover # of Pages: 79 Pub. Date: 2005 ISBN-10: 0573627746 ISBN-13: 9780573627743 Cast Size: 2 women, 3men
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About
the Play:
We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! is a full-length comedy by
Dario Fo. With the price of
groceries rising every day, what's a poor girl to do? Stuff bags of
food up her sweater and pretend to be pregnant, of course! Laughs are
on special when 1997 Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo,
one of the leading figures in modern farce and political drama, opens
the can on shoplifting. In a translation by Fo's close collaborator
Ron Jenkins, We
Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! is a
side-splitting satire that will have your audience rolling in the (grocery)
aisles.
We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!
is a hilarious farce featuring a comic duo who experience escapades
reminiscent of the Lucy and Ethel characters in "I Love Lucy."
Using his own commedia dell'arte-inspired methods, Dario Fo
tells the story of two women who
find themselves
tangled in a web of lies involving groceries and a fake pregnancy.
A housewife comes home with
groceries she has swiped as part of a spontaneous community riot
protesting the high prices at a local grocery store where 300 women
did the same. Oh boy, these two will have some real explaining to do.
In her effort to keep her secret from her husband, she hides some of
the groceries under her best friend's raincoat. Her husband and his
friend, the accomplice's husband, notice the bulge, of course; but
they believe the explanation that the accomplice is pregnant!
Hilarity is piled upon hilarity as the characters try to extricate
themselves from the mess they have gotten into. Eventually, they all
unite to support the spontaneous resistance to eviction in their
housing project.
We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!
premiered
in 1999 at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. This translation, prepared by
Ron Jenkins in
consultation with Dario Fo
and Franca Rhame (his
wife and creative partner), was
a success Off Broadway and across the US.
The play is
regularly performed in regional
repertory,
high school, college, and community theatre productions.
Cast: 2 women, 3men.
What people say:
"Hilarious comedy... funnier
than anything I've seen in 15 years." — The Village
Voice
"The
work of a social reformer with a fractured funny bone... Mr. Fo's
manic farce should be obligatory viewing for anyone battling, i.e.,
succumbing to, the high cost of living."
— The New York Times
About the Playwright:
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.
Ron Jenkins is Professor of Theater at Weslyn University,
specializes in cross-cultural investigations of clowning. He is a
recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and his translations of Dario Fo have been staged at the American Repertory Theatre and the Yale
Repertory Theatre. |
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Dario Fo, translated by Ron Jenkins
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