From Library Journal
Behan, a lecturer in Italian studies at the University of Canterbury, has written the first political biography of Dario Fo, Europe's leading radical dramatist, and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature. Chapters 1, 2, and 6 provide biographical information about Fo, necessarily intermixed with background on Italy's postwar leftist political movements. Fo's greatest period--from 1968, when he broke with the commercial theater, until the late 1970s, 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, Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1969), Mistero Buffo (1968), and Can't Pay? Won't Pay! (1974). Behan, the author of a study of the Communist Party and the working class in Milan, is unusually qualified for this undertaking. Recommended for collections supporting advanced study in either modern Italian politics or political theater; Tony Mitchell's Dario Fo: People's Court Jester (1984. o.p.) may be sufficient for public and undergraduate collections.-Robert W. Melton, Univ. of Kansas Libs., Lawrence Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For three decades Dario Fo has been the world's most performed living playwright and Europe's leading radical dramatist. He was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 71 for his contribution as a writer, actor and mime artist over half a century, despite being reviled by governments, arrested for obscenity and condemned by the Vatican for blasphemy. His plays have been translated into numerous languages and performed in many countries around the world. In the first political biography of Dario Fo, Tom Behan traces Fo's life and work from his beginnings in cabaret and mime in postwar Italy and his early writings for TV and radio, to the development of his political ideas and the influence of his plays outside Italy, in particular in the English-speaking world. Behan broadens his study to examine the importance of Fo's work to the working class and to explore the relationship between mass left wing 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 ￯﾿ﾽ state repression in The Accidental Death of an Anarchist; rebellion in Can't Pay, Won't Pay, the tragedy of leftwing terrorism in Trumpets and Raspberries; and the anti-Clerical satire of Mistero Buffo.

SYNOPSIS

For three decades Dario Fo has been the world's most performed living playwright and Europe's leading radical dramatist. He was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 71 for his contribution as a writer, actor and mime artist over half a century, despite being reviled by governments, arrested for obscenity and condemned by the Vatican for blasphemy. His plays have been translated into numerous languages and performed in many countries around the world.In the first political biography of Dario Fo, Tom Behan traces Fo's life and work from his beginnings in cabaret and mime in postwar Italy and his early writings for TV and radio, to the development of his political ideas and the influence of his plays outside Italy, in particular in the English-speaking world. Behan broadens his study to examine the importance of Fo's work to the working class and to explore the relationship between mass left wing 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 ￯﾿ﾽ state repression in The Accidental Death of an Anarchist; rebellion in Can't Pay, Won't Pay, the tragedy of leftwing terrorism in Trumpets and Raspberries; and the anti-Clerical satire of Mistero Buffo.

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