Joseph Farrell and Antonio Scuderi present an international collection of essays reevaluating the multifaceted performance art of Nobel laureate Dario Fo.

The contributors, all of whom either have previously published on Fo or have worked with him, are the major Dario Fo scholars of three continents. Going beyond the Marxist criticism of the 1970s and 1980s, the editors and contributors try to establish an appropriate language in which to debate Fo's theater. They seek to identify the core of Fo's work, the material that will be of lasting value. This involves locating Fo in history,...

As a playwright and a performer, Dario Fo (1926-) is one of the most important figures in world theatre. By the 1980s some were proclaiming him the most widely performed living playwright. In 1997 his achievements were acknowledged with the Nobel Prize for literature. Based on his interpretations of the Marxist social writer Antonio Gramsci, Fo's politically motivated theatre strives to restore dignity to the popular culture of the masses. As part of this process, his theatre is structured on popular forms that challenge the preeminence of an authoritative text. In order to create a thematic...