SOURCE: "Mistero Buffo: Popular Culture, The Giullari and the Grotesque," in Dario Fo: People's Court Jester, Methuen, 1984, pp. 10-33.

Mitchell offers a detailed examination of Mistero Buffo. This work, he declares, "and its many offshoots, together with the countless improvised routines and sketches on topical events which Fo frequently makes up on the spot, reveal him as the 'theatrical animal' that he is, and show his unique capacity for turning a one-man show into a piece of epic and total theatre."

Italian actor-playwright Dario Fo, who also combines the roles of director, stage designer, song-writer, and political campaigner, has in recent years become the most widely-performed dramatist in the European and world theatre. He has himself performed his solo pièce celêbre, Mistero buffo, throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and in Canada and Peru, and it has become one of the most controversial and popular spectacles of...