Dario Fo has died, a great artist and irreverent acrobat, deservedly awarded the Nobel Prize for literature by virtue of his extraordinary and innovative career as an author, actor and guitto. He passed away at the age of 90 due to lung problems after 12 days of hospitalization at the Sacco hospital in Milan.
It is difficult to bring his artistic activity back to traditional schemes. Playwright, director, set designer, painter, writer, impresario: Dario Fo was all of this. The red thread that held together his multifaceted activity during his long and successful life (“Exaggeratedly lucky”, he himself said) was the vocation of the jester who mocks power with simplicity and biting irony.
His "Mistero buffo" (1969) was an extraordinary show that broke the mould, highly innovative also in terms of language (with his bizarre grammelot that took sounds from different languages but was understandable and everyone) and forerunner of a vein that Fo he continued with over a hundred dramaturgical texts which earned him the Nobel Prize in 1997.
We cannot talk about Dario Fo without recalling his political commitment, combined with his secularism, which earned him the ban from Rai and the continuous difficulties with censorship in the dark years of the Republic, those of the "state massacres" and the terrorism. His union with Franca Rame, wife and partner in life and in the theatre, was happy and lasting. When both parents died, the artistic legacy of Dario Fo and Franca Rame remained with their son Jacopo, who was also attracted to the theatre.
“With Dario Fo, Italy loses one of the great protagonists of theatre, culture and civil life in our country. His satire, research, work on stage, his multifaceted artistic activity remain the legacy of a great Italian in the world. My personal condolences and those of the Italian government go to his family". This is the message from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on the news of his death.
