Dario
Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970)
is a sharp and hilarious satire on police corruption
in Italy. Coming from one of the most popular, and the
most widely and frequently produced playwright-performers
of the 20th century, the play explicitly
critiques the politics of tyranny prevalent in fascist
Italy. Focusing on a controversial incident, the death
of a Milanese railway worker in a police interrogation
room, Fo's play illustrates the atrocities of an authoritarian
regime. The play reverts to the Italian tradition of
medieval folk players and employs tropes such as `play
within a play' and the figure of a `jongleur' to debunk
the fascist narrative. While Fo's theatre is a clarion
call for an egalitarian rearrangement of society, it
does not blindly advocate the tenets of left-wing politics.
Fo's avant-gardism lies in transcending the binary opposition
between communism and fascism, and his political subversion
inheres in the critique of all extremist ideologies.
The paper seeks to establish that Accidental Death
of an Anarchist deconstructs all existing political
ideologies by radically questioning the corruption that
has infiltrated into them.
Nobel
Laureate Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist
(1970) is one of the most powerful political satires
of Italian theatre. Fo's play is based on a true incident,
the murder of a Milanese railway worker under the tyrannical
regime of the Christian democratic government in fascist
Italy. A controversial play of its times, it can be
read as an excellent example of subversion that undoes
the corruption in both left and right-wing ideologies.
The present paper seeks to posit Fo's Accidental
Death of an Anarchist as a text upholding political
deconstruction, thereby highlighting its socio-political
relevance.
As
a political activist and playwright, Dario Fo always
identified himself with the commune. Along with his
wife, Franca Rame, he produced and acted in several
agit-prop plays, expressing his dissent against the
fascist government in Italy through the 1960s and 70s.
Naturally, the reaction of the political authorities
and the right-wing press was to call for censorship
of his plays. Even though, public opinion strongly supported
Fo, the fascist government frequently imprisoned him.
As misfortune would have it, his wife was abducted and
brutally raped by the fascist workers. |
