Foreign Criticism
Dario Fo: Stage, Text, and Tradition
Joseph Farrell, Antonio Scuderi, eds.
Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press, 2000. 222 pages, ill., $39.95
ISBN0-8093-2335-4
MORE THAN THREE YEARS have gone by
since Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize in
Literature (9 october, 1997), yet
the flurry of publications on the Italian
author has not abated. The volume under
review proves either that winning a prestigious prize provides more steam to the
printing presses than one can actually
imagine, or that Fo always possessed
timeless qualities which justified the
award of the Nobel in the first place. Obviously the authors of the eleven essays
in Dario Fo: Stage, Text, and Tradition
would argue for the second of these
points of view. It is in fact the premise included in the introduction to this book
that Fo's opus is of lasting quality, which
the essayists proceed to examine and
identify. Their goals consist in locating
Fo in history, tracing his development
through the successive phases of his career, incorporating his politics and ideology, and setting his theatrical achievements within a context and tradition.
Given Fo's multiple roles as an artist, it
is inevitable that a number of the essays
touch on the fundamental roles of writer
and performer as well as the relationship
between the written word and what is
eventually performed on stage. And because this is a book in English, the subject of translation also figures prominently. In one of the most interesting essays,
Ron Jenkins takes us to the stage as he
details his challenging role of interpreter
during Fo's performances in English-speaking countries because of the writeractor's constant improvisations. Even
though Fo knows little English, he somehow manages to sense when the interpreter makes a mistake and on occasion
even succeeds in incorporating the error
into the performance.
Another aspect that seems to be of interest to the contributors is Fo's background, his roots. As usual, the by now
well-known relationship between the
commedia dell'arte and Ruzzante
emerges, as well as the tradition of the
author-actor in Italian theater, particularly in the nineteenth century but also in
the twentieth, as in the case of Eduardo
De Filippo. In one of the essays, Antonio
Scuderi traces Fo's origins all the way to
classical Roman comedy.
Inevitably, the quality and interest of
the essays are uneven. Some of them
have the odor of dissertations, with very
long quotes, and on occasion are loosely organized, dealing with issues which
stray far from the title topic. Others are
very well researched, and still others
spend a good deal of ink telling the plot
of the plays studied, suggesting their audience may be totally unfamiliar with Fo.
The question of audience for the book is,
in fact, the primary problem, for we are
never clear whether it aims to reach the
expert or the novice student of Fo.
The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Fo
expanded the definition of literature to
include performance as being as worthy
of recognition as the written word. The
book at hand adds to his recognition, but
it also makes clear that even if Fo's success in Italy may be due to his talent as a
performer, the popularity of his plays
abroad must be related to something
else: the words he has put on paper.
by Domenico Maceri, Allan Hancock College
In ITALIAN:
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