SOURCE: "From Italian Roots to American Relevance: The Remarkable Theatre of Dario Fo," in Modern Drama, Vol. XXXII, No. 4, December, 1989, pp. 532-44.

[In the following essay, Fo is viewed as a successor to earlier twentieth-century "Italian geniuses of the comic spirit" Totò and Eduardo De Filippo.]

Clowns are grotesque blashpemers against all our pieties. That's why we need them. They're our alter egos.

                —Dario Fo, Cambridge, May 1987

Americans writing about theatre have been pronouncing Dario Fo's work extraordinary, whether for performance or political reasons, or for both. "For the past decade," claimed Joel Schechter in 1985, "Dario Fo has been Europe's most popular political satirist." "So many theatres have included Fo in their recent seasons," wrote Ron Jenkins in 1986, "that he has become the most-produced contemporary Italian playwright in the U.S." American producers interested in social satire seem to have become less leery of this zany Italian genius...