Dario Fo: Framing, Festival, and the Folkloric Imagination

Antonio Scuderi’s Dario Fo: Framing, Festival, and the Folkloric Imagination is a fascinating contribution to the ever-growing body of scholarship on the Italian giullare. The author takes an interdisciplinary approach, centred on the crossroads of theatre, performance, folk, and Italian studies. Pragmatically tapping into the fields of sociology and anthropology, Scuderi provides insights into the web of theatrical and literary techniques that constitute the creative scaffolding supporting post-1966 Foian satires and giullarate. ― Modern Drama

Once, Dario Fo was celebrated as author of militant works whose themes were taken from that day’s headlines. If his work is to be staged and enjoyed in the future, it will be due to perceptive criticism like that provided by Antonio Scuderi, who probes deep under the surface to locate a Fo rooted in theatrical and folkloric tradition, but willing to challenge and innovate inside that tradition. This is a genuinely original, new look at Dario Fo’s theatre. — Joseph Farrell, University of Strathclyde

This learned, complex, and deeply humane study of Dario Fo shows us, in thick description, why this modern-day giullare is an international as well as a national treasure. Scuderi casts new light on several dimensions of Fo’s serious play: his ‘epic theater’ melding of narrative and drama; his informed and plastic re-presentation of history; his transmission of medieval/Renaissance performance traditions; and his imaginative deployment of carnival motifs and the zoomorphic mask. — Robert Henke, Washington University

Dario Fo’s deep immersion in folk and popular culture poses a special challenge for the critic. In order to understand Fo’s creative oeuvre, one must be versed not only in the history of modern drama, but also the culture and scholarship of storytelling, festival, and popular entertainments in Italy and the wider world that inspired him. Antonio Scuderi, whose previous work has opened to us the energizing force of Fo’s popular vision, is more than equal to the task. He moves adroitly from buffo to Bateson, the grotesque to Gramsci, tale-telling to Turner in illuminating the dynamics of Fo’s plays and, equally importantly, of his performance. Dario Fo: Framing, Festival, and the Folkloric Imagination is a masterful and illuminating work, an indispensable key to Fo’s creative and critical achievement. — Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Indiana University-Bloomington