Remembering Dario Fo

Dario Fo – actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter, political campaigner and Nobel Prize winner – died on 13 October 2016 aged 90.

I was fortunate enough to meet him in 1989, when he was producing the play The Pope and the Witch at the Teatro dell'Arte in Milan, where my father Aldo and brother Marco worked. 

Thanks to my father I was able to sit discreetly in the back row of the theatre to watch the rehearsals, with Dario and his wife Franca Rame 'creating' the play, acting and directing it at the same time, tutoring and interacting with the numerous actors that surrounded them. 

Dario was a great man and a great writer too.

You can find a well written obituary in the Economist:

 http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21708977-playwright-actor-artist-and-all-round-provocateur-was-90

And a more extensive one in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/oct/13/dario-fo-obituary

– Alessandra Zecchini

Milan: thousands attended the funeral of Dario Fo in Milan.
Photo courtesy of Marco Teatro

Photo courtesy of Marco Teatro