by Dario Fo

Playwright, actor, political activist, and Nobel laureate, Dario Fo (1926-present) distinguished himself in the latter twentieth century as one of Italy’s most renowned and iconoclastic playwrights. Fo was born in San Giano in the northern part of Lombardy to Felice Fo, a railroad employee, and Pina Rota, the daughter of a peasant family that labored in northern Italy’s rice paddies. In 1940, the Fos decided to send their intellectually promising son to study art at the Liceo Brera (Brera High School), part of the famed Accademia Brera (Brera Academy) in Milan. Although the Second World War temporarily interrupted his studies, Fo finally enrolled in the Accademia Brera and the Istituto Politecnico (Polytechnical Institute), where he studied art and architecture, respectively. In 1949 Fo abandoned formal study to...