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Dario Fo:
"A cross between Bertolt Brecht and Lenny Bruce"
(CNN) -- It comes as no surprise that the selection of Dario Fo for the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature caused a stir in the literary establishment. Here, after all, is a man who has spent a lifetime steeped in controversy, not because his talents were questioned, but because he has at every turn taken on institutions the establishment holds dear.
Fo's considerable body of work, including more than 70 plays, has targeted religion, family, law enforcement, politicians and the middle classes. He has in the process attacked universal social problems such as terrorism, AIDS and drug use, although his satire has as times been mistaken for endorsement of the problems.
Video: Profile of Dario Fo from "Nobel '97," a CNN International special
"Mistero Buffo," the work for which the Italian actor and playwright is best known, is a satire based on a subversive reading of the Scriptures. In it, at one point, the Pope, Biniface VIII, scorns Jesus as a poor man and calls him "crazy." When the play was broadcast in Italy in 1977, the Vatican called it "the most blasphemous show in the history of television."
Press release from the Swedish Academy
announcing Fo's selection as the winner of the
1997 Nobel Prize for LiteratureFo's other works include "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist," a satire based on a real event in Italy in which a man accused of having set bombs in Milan in 1969 "fell" to his death while being interrogated by police.
Some say fie on Fo
When Fo's selection was announced in October, many, including his own countrymen, were astonished. The New York Times quoted the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano: " Giving the prize to someone who is also the author of questionable works is beyond all imagination." Italian critics and columnists also expressed surprise at the choice.
A leftist and former Communist, Fo has distinguished himself as a champion of the downtrodden. In selecting Fo for the honor, the Swedish Academy said, "With a blend of laughter and gravity he opens our eyes to abuses and injustices in society and also the wider historical perspective in which they can be placed."
Fo's attacks on society have not been without cost. In addition to the enormous criticism he has endured, he has been arrested, censored and denied entry to countries, including the United States.
Man of many talents
While Fo won the Nobel for his skills as a playwright, he is also well established as an actor and director. He and his wife, actress and writer Franca Rame, have collaborated on a number of works, many of them dealing with the oppression of women.
Fo performs on stage 2.3M QuickTime movie Fo was born in 1926 in North Italy on the shores of Lake Maggiore. His father was a railway stationmaster and a part-time actor. "I lived side-by-side with the sons of glassblowers, fisherman and smugglers," Fo told the New York Times. "The stories they told were ... satires about the hypocrisy of authority and the middle classes and the two-facedness of teachers and lawyers and politicians. I was born politicized."
It was from these same fishermen and smugglers that Fo acquired an ear for the language that would be the basis for his theatrical dialect.
Fo studied art and architecture before taking up drama in 1952. He began writing monologues for radio. He and Rame married in 1953 and later began producing what Stuart Hood, author of a collection of plays by Fo, describes as "classical farces."
New views, new venues
In the late 1960s, Fo moved away from the traditional theater and, with Rame, started the Nuova Scena company. Some of their plays were staged at venues belonging to the Italian Communist Party. In the early 1970s, Fo and Rame left the Communist Party, finding it as oppressive as the institutions Fo satirized.
Fo's theatrical technique for which he was cited by the Academy combines slapstick, mime and "grammelot," a type of gibberish contrived to sound like a comical form of real language.
The iconoclastic playwright has been compared to everyone from medieval court jesters to the American comedian Sid Caesar. In 1983, New York Times Critic Mel Gussow wrote: "Imagine a cross between Bertolt Brecht and Lenny Bruce and you may begin to have an idea of the scope of Fo's anarchic wit."
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