Dario Fo

Abstract

One of Italy's best-known contemporary dramatists who has built a formidable reputation abroad, Dario Fo has for many years been the target of verbal and physical attacks in his homeland because of his radical stance and opinions. Both he and his wife, Franca Rame, an actress and dramatist who often works in collaboration with him, have been detained by the police, beaten up and assaulted, had bombs planted in their theatre and a theatre burned down. Over a period of four years they were denied entry to the USA under the notorious 1952 McCarran-Walter Act; as recently as last autumn Dario Fo was unable to attend the first night of his play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, in New York. Since we spoke to him during his visit to London, when we asked him to comment on censorship in the Italian theatre and on his and Franca's experience, pressure on the US authorities by a large number of American organisations, including the Fund for Free Expression and PEN, has resulted in the lifting of the ban, so that the playwright was at last able to travel to New York in November 1984.