介绍： Italy’s jester: Italy’s jester
The playwright, actor and artist was 90
From The Economist 20161022

Audio:

0:00




THE stone lions that guard the Romanesque cathedral at Modena, in northern Italy, were doubly dear to Dario Fo. As a lover of medieval architecture, he studied and revered the old beasts as...

介绍： Italy’s jester: Italy’s jester
The playwright, actor and artist was 90
From The Economist 20161022

Audio:

0:00




THE stone lions that guard the Romanesque cathedral at Modena, in northern Italy, were doubly dear to Dario Fo. As a lover of medieval architecture, he studied and revered the old beasts as art. But after roughly 2,000 years of roaring their noses were worn away, their teeth gappy and their expressions dimly surprised. These symbols of the combined might of church and state had been taken over by the people—usually small people, who rode on them laughing and kicked their curled manes with vicious little feet.

All Mr Fo’s life in theatre and politics (the one infusing the other all the time) was dedicated to the idea of il popolo contro i potenti, the people against the powerful. He put himself squarely in the tradition of the giullari, the mocking, singing jesters of medieval Italy, who kept on the move because they were liable to be hanged if they stayed still. The work that made his name and notoriety, “Mistero Buffo” (“Comedy-Mystery”), was a one-man show in which, his long limbs feline in a black jumper and grey trousers, he told, mimed, sang and shouted New Testament stories like an idiot. His Jesus got drunk at the marriage at Cana, climbed on a table and exhorted everyone to forget the afterlife for the here and now; his raising of Lazarus was recounted by a furious pickpocket victim in the crowd. The line to the medieval mystery plays was direct. When Mr Fo won the Nobel prize in 1997 he received it on behalf of all mummers, tumblers and clowns.

Ordinary people were the heroes of all his plays, or rather farces, and authorities of every sort his villains. This touched a raw nerve in the chaotic, kidnap-and-inflation-ridden Italy of the mid-20th century, but also far outside