Writing and Languages in the Theatre of Dario Fo and Franca Rame

Abstract

Dario Fo and Franca Rame were the most recognized Italian teatrologists of the second half of the twentieth century, famous for their popular and committed art, which intended to provoke people to reflect – and, consequently, emancipate – through comedy. This work aims to talk about their creative process and the consequent writing of theatrical texts, starting especially from the reading of the thesis of Maria Teresa Pizza, entitled “At Work with Dario Fo and Franca Rame: Genesis and composition of the Theatrical Work.” For Fo’s case, creation is inseparable from playful and everyday life, the creative experience is not only a temporal, but also a spatial and a transmedia continuum. In the case of Rame, instead, the creation is based on a particular sensitivity to the rhythm of the scene and an excellent capacity for improvisation, followed by a continuous labor of remaking and perfecting the work, which gave rise not only to the couple’s numerous publications, but also to an online archive with over 5 million documents on their works, respecting the multiplicity of languages involved both in the creation and in the execution of each of their texts.