Fo, Dario (1926- ), Italian playwright and actor, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature. He has received both criticism and wide popular acclaim for comedies that satirize such authorities as the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian government. As a performer, Fo has helped revive and revitalize the theatrical traditions of medieval and Renaissance Europe.
    Fo was born into a working-class family in Sangiano, a small town on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. He attended Milan's Academy of Fine Arts, the Brera Art Academy, and a polytechnic institute in Milan. In 1950 he joined a theater troupe, where he began writing and performing his own semi-improvised scenes. Three years later Fo joined a comedy revue and began performing satirical sketches, many of which lampooned political figures. One of the performers in the cast, Franca Rame, became Fo's wife the following year, and the two later collaborated on many plays and sketches. The revue met with popular and critical success, but the government closely monitored their performances, due to Italy's rigid libel laws.
    During the late 1950s and the 1960s Fo and Rame led their own performance group. They mainly produced satires examining government bureaucracy, the Roman Catholic priesthood, and social issues such as divorce (then illegal in Italy). Fo used his gifts for clowning and mime to mock long-held Italian beliefs about history, religion, and middle-class values.
    In 1969 Fo developed what is generally considered his masterpiece, Mistero buffo (translated as Comic Mysteries, 1988). The one-man show is essentially a retelling of the Gospels (the biblical accounts of the life of Jesus Christ), into which Fo inserts his own improvised commentary on religious tradition and contemporary issues. He drew inspiration from the comic techniques of medieval and Renaissance traveling performers, who used stock characters and improvised plots in their shows, and from medieval mystery plays, which provided moral and religious teaching (see Miracle, Mystery, and Morality Plays). Mistero buffo also introduced grammelot, a sort of gibberish that Fo invented by combining the sounds of several European languages. After the play was televised in 1977, Roman Catholic Church authorities described it as "the most blasphemous show in the history of television." But the show gained considerable popularity, and Fo has performed it all over the world hundreds of times, using no props and clothed simply in a dark turtleneck and trousers.
    Morte accidentale di un anarchico (1970; Accidental Death of an Anarchist, 1980) is another of Fo's well-known shows. Based on the true story of an anarchist who either fell or was pushed to his death from a fourth-story window, the show attacks police corruption and the machinations of political parties. Fo's other works include Gli arcangeli non giocano al flipper (1959; Archangels Don't Play Pinball, 1987), about the triumph of a simple-minded man over government bureaucracy, and Non si paga, Non si paga! (1974; We Can't Pay? We Won't Pay!, 1978), about people protesting taxation in Italy.



"Fo, Dario," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.