WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.859 Welcome back to the deep dive. Today we are staring 00:00:02.859 --> 00:00:06.900 into a kaleidoscope or maybe it's a funhouse 00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:09.359 mirror. That's a good way to put it. We are trying 00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:13.140 to unpack the life of a man who embodies what 00:00:13.140 --> 00:00:15.599 is maybe the most confusing the most explosive 00:00:15.599 --> 00:00:18.539 and just a genuinely difficult contradiction 00:00:18.539 --> 00:00:21.100 in modern culture. It really is a contradiction 00:00:21.100 --> 00:00:23.949 that I mean If you saw it in a movie strip, you'd 00:00:23.949 --> 00:00:25.989 probably send it back. You'd say it was unrealistic. 00:00:26.530 --> 00:00:28.989 Exactly. Too on the nose. Right. Because usually, 00:00:29.030 --> 00:00:30.609 you know, when we talk about the Nobel Prize 00:00:30.609 --> 00:00:32.770 in literature, we have a very specific image 00:00:32.770 --> 00:00:35.450 in our heads. Oh, yeah? We picture some somber 00:00:35.450 --> 00:00:38.390 novelist, somewhat very serious, probably wearing 00:00:38.390 --> 00:00:41.030 tweed, sitting in a leather chair, writing about, 00:00:41.210 --> 00:00:43.810 you know, the human condition in very polite, 00:00:43.850 --> 00:00:46.409 abstract terms. The canon of high culture. The 00:00:46.409 --> 00:00:48.350 establishment patting itself on its own back. 00:00:48.549 --> 00:00:51.009 Precisely. But today we're talking about a man 00:00:51.009 --> 00:00:54.609 who won that prize in 1997. Yet years earlier, 00:00:54.750 --> 00:00:57.009 his work was described by the Cardinal Vicar 00:00:57.009 --> 00:01:00.310 of Rome as, and I'm quoting here, the most blasphemous 00:01:00.310 --> 00:01:03.109 show in the history of television. Which is quite 00:01:03.109 --> 00:01:05.629 an accolade if you really think about it. It's 00:01:05.629 --> 00:01:08.390 an award in itself. To go from public enemy number 00:01:08.390 --> 00:01:11.790 one of the Vatican to receiving the highest literary 00:01:11.790 --> 00:01:14.859 honor on the entire planet. We're talking, of 00:01:14.859 --> 00:01:17.439 course, about Dario Fo. And the mission for this 00:01:17.439 --> 00:01:20.140 deep dive is really to try and figure out how 00:01:20.140 --> 00:01:22.859 those two realities can possibly coexist in one 00:01:22.859 --> 00:01:26.420 person. How do you get from slapstick? I mean, 00:01:26.439 --> 00:01:29.239 we're talking people falling into machines, circus 00:01:29.239 --> 00:01:33.400 performers, literal clowns to this biting political 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:35.900 satire that actually got him banned from the 00:01:35.900 --> 00:01:37.939 United States that put him on police watch lists. 00:01:38.200 --> 00:01:40.560 It's a journey that forces us to look not just 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:43.579 at the history of 20th century Italy. which is 00:01:43.579 --> 00:01:45.700 chaotic enough. Oh, absolutely. But also at the 00:01:45.700 --> 00:01:48.560 history of theater itself. Because as we look 00:01:48.560 --> 00:01:50.400 at the source material we have here, what becomes 00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:53.140 incredibly clear is that Faux wasn't just trying 00:01:53.140 --> 00:01:55.620 to be funny. No. He wasn't just a comedian telling 00:01:55.620 --> 00:01:58.680 jokes. He was reviving a very specific, very 00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:01.019 old, and frankly, a very dangerous tradition 00:02:01.019 --> 00:02:04.620 to attack modern power structures. And he wasn't 00:02:04.620 --> 00:02:07.239 doing it alone. We absolutely have to talk about 00:02:07.239 --> 00:02:09.740 his partner, Frank Aram. And I want to be clear 00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:12.020 about this right up front. She wasn't just the 00:02:12.020 --> 00:02:15.240 wife. Or the muse. Absolutely not. That would 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:18.039 be a huge misreading of the story. Without Frank 00:02:18.039 --> 00:02:21.360 Aram, there is no Dario Fo as we know him. Period. 00:02:21.659 --> 00:02:23.520 Their lives were just so intertwined that you 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:25.500 can't talk about one without the other. It's 00:02:25.500 --> 00:02:27.719 a story of art, sure, but it's also a story of 00:02:27.719 --> 00:02:31.259 kidnappings, of censorship, lawsuits. The literal 00:02:31.259 --> 00:02:34.020 bombs going off. It is a turbulent, turbulent 00:02:34.020 --> 00:02:36.460 life. And to understand it, I think we have to 00:02:36.460 --> 00:02:38.800 start at the very, very beginning. Because Dario 00:02:38.800 --> 00:02:41.949 Fo's worldview. didn't start in some sterile 00:02:41.949 --> 00:02:44.669 theater academy. It started in a place that sounds 00:02:44.669 --> 00:02:46.169 like it was pulled right out of a dark fairy 00:02:46.169 --> 00:02:48.039 tale. You're talking about the land of frogs. 00:02:48.479 --> 00:02:52.139 Precisely. So let's go back. 1926, Faux is born 00:02:52.139 --> 00:02:55.620 in Sangiano in Lombardy in northern Italy. And 00:02:55.620 --> 00:02:57.939 just looking at his background, his family, it 00:02:57.939 --> 00:03:01.139 feels very eclectic. It doesn't scream future 00:03:01.139 --> 00:03:03.759 Nobel laureate. To say the least, his father, 00:03:03.900 --> 00:03:06.879 Felice, was a socialist. He was a station master 00:03:06.879 --> 00:03:09.060 for the state railway, which meant the family 00:03:09.060 --> 00:03:11.080 was constantly on the move, transferring from 00:03:11.080 --> 00:03:13.639 station to station all along the Swiss border. 00:03:14.039 --> 00:03:17.039 It was a very nomadic existence. So he's growing 00:03:17.039 --> 00:03:20.120 up on the move. And his mother, Pina Rodafoe, 00:03:20.219 --> 00:03:22.879 she came from a peasant background and she actually 00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:25.580 wrote a book called The Land of Frogs about the 00:03:25.580 --> 00:03:27.650 area they were from. And the sources mentioned 00:03:27.650 --> 00:03:30.389 that his artistic education wasn't formal at 00:03:30.389 --> 00:03:32.870 all. He didn't go to some fancy prep school for 00:03:32.870 --> 00:03:35.250 acting or writing. No, not at all. He learned 00:03:35.250 --> 00:03:38.050 storytelling from his maternal grandfather and 00:03:38.050 --> 00:03:40.310 from the locals. The people around him. Yes, 00:03:40.370 --> 00:03:43.189 specifically Lombard fishers and these itinerant 00:03:43.189 --> 00:03:46.509 glassblowers. This is so crucial. He wasn't learning 00:03:46.509 --> 00:03:49.879 the proper. King's Italian from a textbook. He 00:03:49.879 --> 00:03:52.080 was absorbing the oral tradition of the working 00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:54.639 class. Right. These were people who told stories 00:03:54.639 --> 00:03:56.960 not to get a grade, but to entertain each other 00:03:56.960 --> 00:04:00.360 after a brutal day of physical labor. Their stories 00:04:00.360 --> 00:04:02.840 had to be gripping. They had to land. And there's 00:04:02.840 --> 00:04:04.900 one detail about his childhood home, specifically 00:04:04.900 --> 00:04:07.379 when they lived in Portobal Travaglia, that I 00:04:07.379 --> 00:04:10.060 find absolutely telling. It just feels like it 00:04:10.060 --> 00:04:12.419 explains everything about his future work. I 00:04:12.419 --> 00:04:13.580 think I know where you're going with this. The 00:04:13.580 --> 00:04:16.060 glass -blowing colony. The glass -blowing colony. 00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:19.180 So the sources claim that this specific colony 00:04:19.180 --> 00:04:21.459 had the highest percentage of insane people in 00:04:21.459 --> 00:04:25.180 all of Italy. Now I have to ask, is that a metaphor? 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.980 Or is that like an actual statistic? Because 00:04:28.980 --> 00:04:31.939 it sounds like an urban legend. It sounds totally 00:04:31.939 --> 00:04:34.300 hyperbolic, doesn't it? But the sources suggest 00:04:34.300 --> 00:04:37.279 it was quite literal. At the time, the process 00:04:37.279 --> 00:04:40.060 of glassblowing involved using arsenic and other 00:04:40.060 --> 00:04:42.660 heavy metals. Oh, wow. And the ventilation was... 00:04:42.910 --> 00:04:44.970 you know basically non -existent so you had an 00:04:44.970 --> 00:04:47.810 entire community of workers suffering from chronic 00:04:47.810 --> 00:04:50.689 poisoning neurological damage exactly erratic 00:04:50.689 --> 00:04:53.550 behavior hallucinations what was medically termed 00:04:53.550 --> 00:04:57.430 back then So he's growing up literally surrounded 00:04:57.430 --> 00:04:59.810 by people who are being chemically induced into 00:04:59.810 --> 00:05:02.290 what looks like madness. Which, if you think 00:05:02.290 --> 00:05:04.230 about the characters Fomalator puts on stage, 00:05:04.350 --> 00:05:06.990 the manic energy, the absurdity, these people 00:05:06.990 --> 00:05:09.370 living on the absolute margins of reality, it 00:05:09.370 --> 00:05:11.709 makes perfect sense. He didn't need to invent 00:05:11.709 --> 00:05:13.529 the theater of the absurd. He grew up in it. 00:05:13.870 --> 00:05:17.389 He grew up in it. He saw firsthand that madness 00:05:17.389 --> 00:05:19.930 was often just a byproduct of your labor conditions, 00:05:20.170 --> 00:05:22.949 a consequence of being poor. That's a really 00:05:22.949 --> 00:05:25.170 powerful connection. But before we get to his 00:05:25.170 --> 00:05:27.910 theater career, we have to address this massive 00:05:27.910 --> 00:05:30.990 dark cloud in his biography. The sources call 00:05:30.990 --> 00:05:33.529 it the war years controversy. And this is the 00:05:33.529 --> 00:05:35.529 shadow that really hangs over everything else. 00:05:35.629 --> 00:05:38.430 Right. Because later in life, Dario Fo is the 00:05:38.430 --> 00:05:41.250 hero of the Italian left. He's the ultimate anti 00:05:41.250 --> 00:05:43.680 -fascist. He is the guy sticking. it to the man 00:05:43.680 --> 00:05:46.000 he is the jester of the people but if you actually 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:48.620 look at the records from the 1940s during world 00:05:48.620 --> 00:05:52.720 war ii the story gets incredibly murky it's highly 00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:55.120 highly contested and we need to treat this like 00:05:55.120 --> 00:05:57.439 a forensic investigation because this single 00:05:57.439 --> 00:05:59.600 issue defined his relationship with his critics 00:05:59.600 --> 00:06:01.319 for the rest of his life okay so let's look at 00:06:01.319 --> 00:06:04.220 foe's version first what did he say he did during 00:06:04.220 --> 00:06:07.379 the war Faux's narrative, the story he told for 00:06:07.379 --> 00:06:09.720 decades, was that during the war, he and his 00:06:09.720 --> 00:06:12.079 father were active in the resistance. Okay. He 00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:14.240 claimed they helped smuggle Jewish scientists 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:16.740 and escaped Allied soldiers into Switzerland 00:06:16.740 --> 00:06:20.279 using the railway. Which tracks, logically. His 00:06:20.279 --> 00:06:22.300 dad was a station master right on the border. 00:06:22.459 --> 00:06:24.800 If you're going to smuggle people, that's the 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:27.699 place to do it. It makes perfect sense. And regarding 00:06:27.699 --> 00:06:30.779 his own military service, Faux claimed that when 00:06:30.779 --> 00:06:33.540 he was drafted into Mussolini's army, specifically... 00:06:34.170 --> 00:06:37.529 the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, or RSI. Which 00:06:37.529 --> 00:06:40.089 was the fascist puppet state set up by the Nazis 00:06:40.089 --> 00:06:43.250 in northern Italy after 1943. Yes, the hardcore 00:06:43.250 --> 00:06:46.189 fascist remnant. Faux said he deserted almost 00:06:46.189 --> 00:06:48.990 immediately. He claimed he wandered the countryside, 00:06:49.250 --> 00:06:51.129 sleeping rough, trying to find the partisans 00:06:51.129 --> 00:06:53.589 to join up with them. So that's the hero's journey 00:06:53.589 --> 00:06:56.329 version. He's a resister, a deserter, but that's 00:06:56.329 --> 00:06:58.810 not the only version, is it? No, it's not. And 00:06:58.810 --> 00:07:00.449 this is where the deep dive gets very uncomfortable. 00:07:00.959 --> 00:07:03.980 In the 1970s, right when Faux was at the absolute 00:07:03.980 --> 00:07:06.220 height of his political influence, the right 00:07:06.220 --> 00:07:08.560 wing press and his political opponents started 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:11.199 digging. And what did they find? They found testimonies. 00:07:11.199 --> 00:07:13.279 And eventually this all went to court in 1979. 00:07:14.060 --> 00:07:16.980 These sources, these testimonies suggested he 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:18.920 didn't just get drafted and then run away. No. 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:21.180 They claimed he volunteered for the fascist forces, 00:07:21.399 --> 00:07:23.879 specifically for the parachute battalion. He 00:07:23.879 --> 00:07:27.220 volunteered. That is a huge difference from I 00:07:27.220 --> 00:07:30.019 was drafted and I ran away. A massive difference. 00:07:30.139 --> 00:07:31.740 And it gets worse. There are allegations that 00:07:31.740 --> 00:07:34.860 he participated in anti -partisan roundups, specifically 00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:38.800 the reconquest of the Oslo Valley. Which implies 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:41.660 he was on the ground actively hunting the very 00:07:41.660 --> 00:07:44.019 people he later claimed to be aligned with. Exactly. 00:07:44.120 --> 00:07:46.920 The resistance fighters. So how did the court 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:49.319 rule on this? Did they prove he was a fascist 00:07:49.319 --> 00:07:51.920 volunteer? The court ruling was nuanced, which 00:07:51.920 --> 00:07:54.680 is often a polite way of saying damning but legally 00:07:54.680 --> 00:07:57.600 complicated. The judge acknowledged that Faux 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:00.220 had indeed served in the RSI and that he had 00:08:00.220 --> 00:08:02.360 tried to cover it up later. So he did serve. 00:08:02.600 --> 00:08:05.439 Yes. However, because of the broad amnesty laws 00:08:05.439 --> 00:08:07.560 that were passed after the war to try and heal 00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:10.459 a nation, he wasn't technically guilty of a crime 00:08:10.459 --> 00:08:14.240 in the legal sense, but historically. The evidence 00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:17.120 strongly suggests he wore that uniform. So why 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:18.899 does this matter so much? I mean, he was a teenager 00:08:18.899 --> 00:08:22.199 at the time, right? 18 or 19 years old. It matters 00:08:22.199 --> 00:08:25.240 because of the hypocrisy argument. His entire 00:08:25.240 --> 00:08:28.319 career, his entire moral authority was built 00:08:28.319 --> 00:08:31.779 on calling out others for their pasts, for their 00:08:31.779 --> 00:08:34.740 corruption, for their compromises. Right. So 00:08:34.740 --> 00:08:37.320 for his enemies, having the gesture of the people 00:08:37.320 --> 00:08:40.889 wearing a fascist badge. Even if he later argued 00:08:40.889 --> 00:08:43.750 he did it to avoid being shot or to act as a 00:08:43.750 --> 00:08:47.309 mole or just out of youthful confusion, it gave 00:08:47.309 --> 00:08:50.250 them ammunition for 50 years. Did he ever actually 00:08:50.250 --> 00:08:52.629 admit it or did he stick to the I was a partisan 00:08:52.629 --> 00:08:55.629 story his whole life? He eventually pivoted his 00:08:55.629 --> 00:08:58.129 defense. It became I was a confused boy in a 00:08:58.129 --> 00:09:01.529 chaotic time. He argued he joined the anti -aircraft 00:09:01.529 --> 00:09:03.309 division thinking he'd be discharged because 00:09:03.309 --> 00:09:05.350 they had no ammunition, or that he was trying 00:09:05.350 --> 00:09:07.210 to protect his family by not going AWOL immediately. 00:09:07.570 --> 00:09:10.789 It's the gray zone of civil war. Yes. And it's 00:09:10.789 --> 00:09:13.149 a reminder that history isn't as black and white 00:09:13.149 --> 00:09:15.429 as the plays might sometimes suggest. And maybe 00:09:15.429 --> 00:09:17.830 it explains the sheer intensity of his later 00:09:17.830 --> 00:09:20.470 anti -fascism. It's possible. Sometimes the most 00:09:20.470 --> 00:09:22.370 fervent believers are those who have seen the 00:09:22.370 --> 00:09:24.710 other side up close, or maybe those who are trying 00:09:24.710 --> 00:09:27.519 to outrun their own shadows. So the war ends. 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:31.100 The confused boy survives. He heads to Milan. 00:09:31.519 --> 00:09:33.860 And initially, he's not trying to be an actor. 00:09:34.019 --> 00:09:36.480 He's studying architecture at the Brera Academy 00:09:36.480 --> 00:09:39.539 and the Polytechnic. But he was miserable doing 00:09:39.539 --> 00:09:42.440 it. He saw the post -war reconstruction of Milan 00:09:42.440 --> 00:09:45.580 as just cheap, impersonal, capitalist architecture. 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:48.500 No soul. He actually had a nervous breakdown 00:09:48.500 --> 00:09:50.679 over it. And I love the doctor's advice here. 00:09:50.799 --> 00:09:53.679 It's so simple, yet you never hear a doctor say 00:09:53.679 --> 00:09:55.600 this anymore. The doctor told him, essentially, 00:09:55.700 --> 00:09:58.379 stop studying, stop doing what's making you sick, 00:09:58.480 --> 00:10:01.580 do what brings you joy, go be an artist. A prescription 00:10:01.580 --> 00:10:03.960 that literally changed the course of 20th country 00:10:03.960 --> 00:10:06.879 theater history. He started painting first, but 00:10:06.879 --> 00:10:09.460 soon he found the Piccoli -Titra, the small theaters 00:10:09.460 --> 00:10:11.940 movement. And this is where he starts doing these 00:10:11.940 --> 00:10:14.179 improvised monologues. And it's here that we 00:10:14.179 --> 00:10:16.059 have to introduce a concept that is absolutely 00:10:16.059 --> 00:10:18.720 fundamental to understanding Dario Faux. If you 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:20.639 take one thing away from this whole deep dive, 00:10:20.740 --> 00:10:23.340 it should be this term. Okay, lay it on us. Gramalot. 00:10:23.899 --> 00:10:25.919 Gramalot. It sounds like a delicious French dessert. 00:10:26.220 --> 00:10:29.120 It is actually a theatrical device. It dates 00:10:29.120 --> 00:10:31.240 all the way back to the Middle Ages to the Comedia 00:10:31.240 --> 00:10:33.539 dell 'Art. What is it? Gramalot is essentially 00:10:33.539 --> 00:10:36.320 a gibberish language. It's a way of speaking 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:39.080 that mimics the rhythm, the cadence, and the 00:10:39.080 --> 00:10:42.139 emotional tone of... a real language like French 00:10:42.139 --> 00:10:45.639 or English or a rigid political dialect. But 00:10:45.639 --> 00:10:48.639 it uses no actual intelligible words. So it's 00:10:48.639 --> 00:10:51.080 just nonsense. It's structured nonsense. Faux 00:10:51.080 --> 00:10:54.940 would use onomatopoeia, grunts, whistles, sounds, 00:10:55.059 --> 00:10:58.679 and these wild physical gestures to convey the 00:10:58.679 --> 00:11:00.840 meaning. Okay, but why do that? Why not just 00:11:00.840 --> 00:11:03.419 write a script with real words? Two very important 00:11:03.419 --> 00:11:06.429 reasons. First... It's hilarious. Seeing someone 00:11:06.429 --> 00:11:08.830 speak American technocrat by just making these 00:11:08.830 --> 00:11:10.970 harsh barking noises and puffing out their chest, 00:11:11.070 --> 00:11:13.629 it instantly highlights how ridiculous that authority 00:11:13.629 --> 00:11:16.269 figure is. Okay, I can see that. But secondly, 00:11:16.529 --> 00:11:19.070 and much more importantly, evading censorship. 00:11:19.490 --> 00:11:22.250 Ah, of course. You can't censor a word that doesn't 00:11:22.250 --> 00:11:24.730 exist. Exactly. If the police demanded to see 00:11:24.730 --> 00:11:26.970 his script, Faux could hand them a piece of paper 00:11:26.970 --> 00:11:29.710 that just said, grunt, whistle, wave arms. And 00:11:29.710 --> 00:11:31.840 the censor would say, Well, there's no treason 00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:35.019 here. But then on stage, through his intonation 00:11:35.019 --> 00:11:37.639 and his gestures, Faux could make it crystal 00:11:37.639 --> 00:11:40.559 clear to the audience that the grunt was the 00:11:40.559 --> 00:11:43.200 prime minister and the whistle was a bribe being 00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:46.139 passed under the table. That is genius. It's 00:11:46.139 --> 00:11:49.000 plausible deniability as an art form. It allowed 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:51.340 him to say the unsayable. right in front of the 00:11:51.340 --> 00:11:53.960 authorities. And he starts honing this skill 00:11:53.960 --> 00:11:56.539 in the 1950s. Which leads us to his first big 00:11:56.539 --> 00:12:00.019 break. He gets a radio show on the national broadcaster, 00:12:00.139 --> 00:12:03.500 RAI. It's called Porn Nano. Which means poor 00:12:03.500 --> 00:12:06.000 thing. And this show is fascinating because it 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:09.919 is our first real glimpse of Faux deconstructing 00:12:09.919 --> 00:12:12.279 what he saw as the sacred cows of culture. He 00:12:12.279 --> 00:12:14.480 took these monolithic stories, biblical tales, 00:12:14.639 --> 00:12:17.019 Shakespeare, historical epics, and he just twisted 00:12:17.019 --> 00:12:19.740 them to show the real grubby version underneath. 00:12:20.039 --> 00:12:22.460 The examples in the notes are just wild. He did 00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:25.440 a version of Hamlet, but in his version, Hamlet 00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:31.350 is... No, not at all. In Faux's version, Hamlet 00:12:31.350 --> 00:12:33.870 kills his own father, not out of revenge for 00:12:33.870 --> 00:12:35.649 his murder, but because he wants to continue 00:12:35.649 --> 00:12:37.789 an affair he's having with his mother, Gertrude. 00:12:37.950 --> 00:12:41.850 That is a very different take. And Ophelia is 00:12:41.850 --> 00:12:45.190 portrayed as his uncle's trans mistress. What? 00:12:45.570 --> 00:12:48.250 And Horatio isn't a ghost or a noble friend. 00:12:48.509 --> 00:12:51.090 He's just a guy in a sheet who only shows up 00:12:51.090 --> 00:12:53.879 when Hamlet is drunk. He's completely shredding 00:12:53.879 --> 00:12:56.100 it. He's taking the most sacred texts of Western 00:12:56.100 --> 00:12:58.460 culture and turning them into a depraved soap 00:12:58.460 --> 00:13:01.659 opera. He also did an albino Othello and a sadistic 00:13:01.659 --> 00:13:04.100 Juliet who keeps Romeo trapped in the garden 00:13:04.100 --> 00:13:06.539 with savage dogs because she enjoys watching 00:13:06.539 --> 00:13:08.539 him suffer. I would pay good money to hear that 00:13:08.539 --> 00:13:11.700 today. But the authorities in 1950s Italy, I 00:13:11.700 --> 00:13:13.519 imagine they were not laughing. Oh, no. They 00:13:13.519 --> 00:13:15.500 canceled the show. Yeah. And this is a recurring 00:13:15.500 --> 00:13:17.259 theme we are going to see over and over again. 00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:20.179 Faux finds a platform. Faux says something shocking. 00:13:20.440 --> 00:13:22.740 The authorities panic and they shut him down. 00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:24.919 But censorship just pushed him back to the stage. 00:13:25.039 --> 00:13:27.639 And around this time, something arguably more 00:13:27.639 --> 00:13:29.860 important than the radio show happens in his 00:13:29.860 --> 00:13:34.620 life. He meets Franck Aram. In 1954, they were 00:13:34.620 --> 00:13:36.539 working together in a review called Seven Days 00:13:36.539 --> 00:13:38.889 in Milan. Now, I want to circle back to what 00:13:38.889 --> 00:13:40.909 you said earlier about Frank Aram. I was looking 00:13:40.909 --> 00:13:42.629 at the notes, and I think it's easy to assume 00:13:42.629 --> 00:13:44.450 she was just another talented actress he met 00:13:44.450 --> 00:13:46.669 in Milan, but her background is actually deeper 00:13:46.669 --> 00:13:49.090 in theater than his is, isn't it? Much, much 00:13:49.090 --> 00:13:52.350 deeper. If Faux was a self -taught storyteller 00:13:52.350 --> 00:13:55.529 from the provinces, Frank Aram was theatrical 00:13:55.529 --> 00:13:59.110 royalty. Right. She came from a family of traveling 00:13:59.110 --> 00:14:01.909 players, the Rehm family, who had been performing 00:14:01.909 --> 00:14:04.769 in Lombardy and Piedmont for literally generations. 00:14:05.210 --> 00:14:07.710 How far back. The sources say it dates back to 00:14:07.710 --> 00:14:11.669 the 1600s. She was born on the stage. Practically. 00:14:11.970 --> 00:14:14.370 She made her stage debut as an infant in her 00:14:14.370 --> 00:14:16.990 mother's arms. She knew the mechanics of touring, 00:14:17.110 --> 00:14:19.309 of costumes, of reading an audience, of managing 00:14:19.309 --> 00:14:21.929 the books. She knew the business inside and out. 00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:24.220 So when they married and formed the Campagna 00:14:24.220 --> 00:14:26.519 for Rom. She brought that professional infrastructure. 00:14:26.840 --> 00:14:29.200 Faux provided the manic creativity, the scripts, 00:14:29.340 --> 00:14:32.000 the set designs, the painting. But Rom provided 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:34.379 the discipline, the incredible acting chops, 00:14:34.539 --> 00:14:36.980 and the administrative steel to keep the whole 00:14:36.980 --> 00:14:39.299 enterprise from falling apart. They were a power 00:14:39.299 --> 00:14:41.740 couple before that term even existed. And they 00:14:41.740 --> 00:14:43.960 start having real success. They're doing reviews. 00:14:44.200 --> 00:14:47.080 They're in films. They're becoming the darlings 00:14:47.080 --> 00:14:49.570 of the Italian entertainment scene. They were 00:14:49.570 --> 00:14:51.870 rich. They were famous. They were comfortable. 00:14:52.090 --> 00:14:56.009 Very comfortable. But then comes 1962 and the 00:14:56.009 --> 00:14:58.669 Kanzanissima scandal. This is the moment where 00:14:58.669 --> 00:15:01.490 they go from being popular entertainers to being 00:15:01.490 --> 00:15:04.070 troublemakers. And Kanzanissima wasn't just a 00:15:04.070 --> 00:15:07.799 show. It was the show. It was a massive... primetime 00:15:07.799 --> 00:15:11.519 TV variety lottery show connected to the New 00:15:11.519 --> 00:15:14.120 Year's celebration. So millions of people watching. 00:15:14.419 --> 00:15:17.139 Millions. The sources say that taxi drivers in 00:15:17.139 --> 00:15:19.320 Italian cities would complain they had no work 00:15:19.320 --> 00:15:21.519 while it was on because everyone in the entire 00:15:21.519 --> 00:15:23.519 country was at home watching it. So they have 00:15:23.519 --> 00:15:25.340 the biggest platform in the country. They have 00:15:25.340 --> 00:15:27.480 the eyes of the entire nation. And what do they 00:15:27.480 --> 00:15:29.720 do with it? They decide to do a sketch about 00:15:29.720 --> 00:15:32.559 a canned meat factory. It sounds so innocuous 00:15:32.559 --> 00:15:34.519 on the surface, doesn't it? A funny little sketch 00:15:34.519 --> 00:15:37.899 about a factory. But it was brutal satire. Walk 00:15:37.899 --> 00:15:39.580 us through it, what actually happens in the sketch. 00:15:39.879 --> 00:15:42.960 Okay, so the sketch featured a fat aunt who goes 00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:46.240 to visit her nephew at his workplace. A canned 00:15:46.240 --> 00:15:49.580 meat factory. She's looking around, she's marveling 00:15:49.580 --> 00:15:51.679 at all the machinery, and then through a series 00:15:51.679 --> 00:15:54.299 of slapstick mishaps, she falls into a mincing 00:15:54.299 --> 00:15:56.720 machine. A classic comedy setup. But she comes 00:15:56.720 --> 00:16:00.220 out the other end as minced meat. Canned meat. 00:16:00.620 --> 00:16:02.899 And the punchline isn't just, oh no, auntie is 00:16:02.899 --> 00:16:04.799 dead. The punchline is that the nephew takes 00:16:04.799 --> 00:16:07.559 the can home and keeps the canned aunt in a cupboard. 00:16:07.759 --> 00:16:10.259 He doesn't bury her. He just keeps the can. That 00:16:10.259 --> 00:16:13.340 is so dark. The reaction was immediate. But interestingly, 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:15.419 it wasn't aunt's associations who complained. 00:16:15.740 --> 00:16:18.019 It wasn't the moral majority concerned about 00:16:18.019 --> 00:16:20.379 the sanctity of human life. Who was it? It was 00:16:20.379 --> 00:16:23.159 meat producers and the industrialists. Why? Because 00:16:23.159 --> 00:16:25.000 it made their product look bad? Because it was 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:27.360 a scathing critique of working conditions and 00:16:27.360 --> 00:16:29.659 the commodification of human life under capitalism? 00:16:30.110 --> 00:16:33.549 The subtext was crystal clear. To the factory 00:16:33.549 --> 00:16:35.970 owner, a worker and a cow are the same thing. 00:16:36.009 --> 00:16:39.610 They're just meat for the machine. The industrialists 00:16:39.610 --> 00:16:41.970 saw it as a direct attack on the economic miracle 00:16:41.970 --> 00:16:44.769 of post -war Italy. So the pressure is on. The 00:16:44.769 --> 00:16:48.250 network RAI is getting very nervous. And then 00:16:48.250 --> 00:16:50.730 a few episodes later, Faux and Ram want to do 00:16:50.730 --> 00:16:53.909 another sketch. This one is about safety on construction 00:16:53.909 --> 00:16:57.360 sites. Specifically... about how many workers 00:16:57.360 --> 00:17:00.820 were dying due to a lack of basic safety protocols. 00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:04.859 The producers at RAI said absolutely not. Just 00:17:04.859 --> 00:17:07.359 a flat no. They said it would inflame the unions 00:17:07.359 --> 00:17:09.960 and cause strikes. They demanded huge cuts to 00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:11.980 the script. So what did Fo and Rahm do? Did they 00:17:11.980 --> 00:17:14.119 rewrite it? Did they water it down? They walked 00:17:14.119 --> 00:17:16.359 out. They quit the most popular show in Italy 00:17:16.359 --> 00:17:19.000 mid -season. Just like that. RAI sued them for 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:20.920 breach of contract, destroyed the recordings 00:17:20.920 --> 00:17:23.140 of their episodes, and effectively banned them 00:17:23.140 --> 00:17:25.819 from Italian television for 14 years. 14 years. 00:17:25.920 --> 00:17:28.099 Can you imagine being the biggest star on TV, 00:17:28.200 --> 00:17:30.480 like a top late night host or a beloved sitcom 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:33.700 actor today, and then just vanishing from the 00:17:33.700 --> 00:17:36.440 airwaves because you refused to cut a joke about 00:17:36.440 --> 00:17:39.460 construction safety? It was, on paper, career 00:17:39.460 --> 00:17:42.819 suicide. But this exile from television is what 00:17:42.819 --> 00:17:45.470 forced them to radicalize. If they couldn't be 00:17:45.470 --> 00:17:47.490 on the bourgeois screen, then they would go directly 00:17:47.490 --> 00:17:50.109 to the people. And that brings us right to 1968. 00:17:50.509 --> 00:17:53.890 The world is exploding. You have the May 68 protests 00:17:53.890 --> 00:17:56.130 in France, the student movements everywhere, 00:17:56.269 --> 00:17:58.769 the civil rights movement in the U .S., and Faux 00:17:58.769 --> 00:18:00.769 and Ramey decide, we're done with the official 00:18:00.769 --> 00:18:03.809 theater. They completely abandon the lucrative, 00:18:03.849 --> 00:18:06.630 comfortable theater circuit. No more velvet seats. 00:18:06.890 --> 00:18:09.869 No more high ticket prices. They set up a new 00:18:09.869 --> 00:18:13.200 organization, the Associazione Nuova Sena. And 00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:15.099 where do they perform? In community centers, 00:18:15.299 --> 00:18:17.940 in workers' clubs, bowling alleys, factories 00:18:17.940 --> 00:18:20.759 that were occupied by strikers, places affiliated 00:18:20.759 --> 00:18:22.819 with the Communist Party. This is where that 00:18:22.819 --> 00:18:24.920 mission we talked about in the intro really kicks 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:26.599 in. They weren't just performing plays anymore. 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:28.839 They were reviving this medieval concept, the 00:18:28.839 --> 00:18:31.099 jular. The jular. Yeah. The medieval strolling 00:18:31.099 --> 00:18:34.650 player. The jester. Faux became absolutely obsessed 00:18:34.650 --> 00:18:37.470 with this figure. So explain the jester to us, 00:18:37.569 --> 00:18:39.750 because I think most of us have a very Disney 00:18:39.750 --> 00:18:42.150 version of that in our heads. You know, the guy 00:18:42.150 --> 00:18:44.190 in the funny hat with the bells juggling balls 00:18:44.190 --> 00:18:46.470 for the king. Forget the Disney version entirely. 00:18:47.690 --> 00:18:50.109 In the Middle Ages, the jester wasn't just a 00:18:50.109 --> 00:18:53.730 clown. He was a deeply subversive element. He 00:18:53.730 --> 00:18:56.109 was often the only person in the entire kingdom 00:18:56.109 --> 00:18:59.250 who was allowed to speak truth to power. Because 00:18:59.250 --> 00:19:02.579 it was couched in a joke. Exactly. He could mock 00:19:02.579 --> 00:19:04.720 the bishop, he could mock the king, provided 00:19:04.720 --> 00:19:06.579 he was funny enough to get away with it and not 00:19:06.579 --> 00:19:08.559 get his head chopped off. It's high -stakes stand 00:19:08.559 --> 00:19:10.180 -up comedy. That's a perfect way to describe 00:19:10.180 --> 00:19:13.460 it. Faux saw the jester as the authentic voice 00:19:13.460 --> 00:19:16.200 of the people against the feudal lords. And he 00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:18.319 realized that 1968 wasn't all that different 00:19:18.319 --> 00:19:21.460 from 1268. You still had lords, the industrialists, 00:19:21.460 --> 00:19:23.539 the politicians. You still had the church telling 00:19:23.539 --> 00:19:25.779 people to suffer now for a reward in heaven. 00:19:26.019 --> 00:19:28.730 So he decided to bring the jester back. And the 00:19:28.730 --> 00:19:31.410 play that embodies this best, his absolute masterpiece, 00:19:31.710 --> 00:19:35.109 is Mr. Obufo. Mr. Obufo, or comical mystery play. 00:19:35.230 --> 00:19:38.690 It premiered in 1969. It's a solo piece, essentially 00:19:38.690 --> 00:19:41.250 just faux on stage in a black sweater and black 00:19:41.250 --> 00:19:44.890 pants. No set, no props, just him, his body, 00:19:44.990 --> 00:19:46.690 and the audience. And this is the work that the 00:19:46.690 --> 00:19:48.950 Vatican called the most blasphemous show in history? 00:19:49.130 --> 00:19:51.250 Until the one. We have to dig into this. What 00:19:51.250 --> 00:19:53.990 was so blasphemous about it? Give us an example 00:19:53.990 --> 00:19:56.849 of a sketch from the play. Okay, let's take his 00:19:56.849 --> 00:19:59.950 version of the resurrection of Lazarus. In the 00:19:59.950 --> 00:20:03.329 Bible, this is a very solemn, powerful miracle. 00:20:03.869 --> 00:20:06.829 Jesus raises a man from the dead. Right. In Faux's 00:20:06.829 --> 00:20:09.789 version, he doesn't play Jesus or Lazarus. He 00:20:09.789 --> 00:20:12.430 plays the crowd. He becomes the ticket seller 00:20:12.430 --> 00:20:15.539 who is charging people admission. to see the 00:20:15.539 --> 00:20:17.720 miracle. He's monetizing it. He's monetizing 00:20:17.720 --> 00:20:20.240 it. He plays the guy selling snacks. He plays 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:22.380 the skeptics in the crowd who are betting on 00:20:22.380 --> 00:20:24.519 whether it will work. So he's treating a holy 00:20:24.519 --> 00:20:27.119 miracle like a carnival sideshow. Precisely. 00:20:27.140 --> 00:20:29.420 The crowd is shouting things like, come on, Jesus, 00:20:29.519 --> 00:20:32.160 do the trick, make him jump. And when Lazarus 00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:34.380 finally does rise from the dead, it's not this 00:20:34.380 --> 00:20:36.960 holy transcendent moment. It's chaotic and messy. 00:20:37.579 --> 00:20:41.059 Faux portrays the keeper of the cemetery, who 00:20:41.059 --> 00:20:43.319 is annoyed because he's losing a tenant and has 00:20:43.319 --> 00:20:46.059 to give the money back. The satire isn't really 00:20:46.059 --> 00:20:49.619 attacking Jesus. Faux actually had a lot of respect 00:20:49.619 --> 00:20:52.420 for the historical Jesus as a revolutionary figure. 00:20:52.660 --> 00:20:55.339 It was attacking the way the church and society 00:20:55.339 --> 00:20:58.500 package religion as a spectacle. to distract 00:20:58.500 --> 00:21:00.700 the poor from their suffering. It's that idea 00:21:00.700 --> 00:21:03.700 of scourging authority, which the Nobel Committee 00:21:03.700 --> 00:21:06.200 later cited. But even though they were performing 00:21:06.200 --> 00:21:09.079 for workers and communists at this point, Faux 00:21:09.079 --> 00:21:11.220 wasn't exactly a toe -of -the -line party member, 00:21:11.400 --> 00:21:14.900 was he? Far from it. Faux was fiercely independent. 00:21:15.299 --> 00:21:17.880 He openly criticized the official Italian Communist 00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:20.819 Party, the PCI, for being too bureaucratic, too 00:21:20.819 --> 00:21:23.359 moderate. Too stuffy. Too stuffy, exactly. He 00:21:23.359 --> 00:21:24.799 thought they were becoming just another part 00:21:24.799 --> 00:21:26.240 of the establishment they were supposed to be 00:21:26.240 --> 00:21:29.269 fighting. led to a lot of friction. Eventually, 00:21:29.470 --> 00:21:31.750 he and Raymay broke away to form yet another 00:21:31.750 --> 00:21:34.390 group, Lacombe. And they set up shop in an abandoned 00:21:34.390 --> 00:21:37.049 building in Milan, the Palazzina Liberty. which 00:21:37.049 --> 00:21:39.130 they physically occupied. It was an abandoned 00:21:39.130 --> 00:21:41.470 market building full of rats and trash. They 00:21:41.470 --> 00:21:43.829 cleaned it up with volunteers, built a stage, 00:21:43.849 --> 00:21:46.390 a library, a conference center. It became this 00:21:46.390 --> 00:21:48.970 incredible hub for the extra -parliamentary left, 00:21:49.170 --> 00:21:51.789 a place where you could go see a play, debate 00:21:51.789 --> 00:21:54.289 politics, and organize a strike all in the same 00:21:54.289 --> 00:21:57.069 night. And this brings us into the 1970s, and 00:21:57.069 --> 00:21:58.849 we need to set the scene for you, because this 00:21:58.849 --> 00:22:01.730 period in Italy has a specific name, the Years 00:22:01.730 --> 00:22:06.180 of Lead. And this wasn't just a time of spirited 00:22:06.180 --> 00:22:08.240 political debate. This was, as I said before, 00:22:08.519 --> 00:22:11.619 a low -level civil war. Why lead? Because of 00:22:11.619 --> 00:22:14.200 the bullets. It was a period of intense domestic 00:22:14.200 --> 00:22:17.200 terrorism from both the far right and the far 00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:19.980 left. You had neo -fascist groups planting bombs 00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:23.000 in public squares to create chaos. You had radical 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:25.420 leftist groups like the Red Brigades kidnapping 00:22:25.420 --> 00:22:28.200 and assassinating politicians. And in the middle 00:22:28.200 --> 00:22:30.259 of it all, you had what was known as the strategy 00:22:30.259 --> 00:22:32.950 of tension. Explain that term, strategy of tension. 00:22:33.250 --> 00:22:35.329 The theory, which has been largely borne out 00:22:35.329 --> 00:22:37.710 by historical inquiry since, was that elements 00:22:37.710 --> 00:22:39.849 within the Italian state, the secret services, 00:22:40.069 --> 00:22:42.470 were colluding with right -wing terrorists. To 00:22:42.470 --> 00:22:45.529 what end? To allow or even facilitate these bombings. 00:22:45.789 --> 00:22:48.430 The goal was to make the public so terrified 00:22:48.430 --> 00:22:51.630 of chaos that they would demand a strong authoritarian 00:22:51.630 --> 00:22:54.880 government to restore order. They wanted to scare 00:22:54.880 --> 00:22:57.059 the people back into submission. That is terrifying. 00:22:57.099 --> 00:22:59.420 The idea of state -sponsored terror against its 00:22:59.420 --> 00:23:02.240 own citizen. And this is the exact paranoid, 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:05.079 violent context in which Faux writes his most 00:23:05.079 --> 00:23:08.579 famous play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist. 00:23:08.700 --> 00:23:11.079 And this play was ripped straight from the headlines 00:23:11.079 --> 00:23:15.200 of the day. Literally. In December 1969, a bomb 00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:17.640 went off in Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 00:23:17.640 --> 00:23:20.890 17 people. The police immediately blamed the 00:23:20.890 --> 00:23:23.309 anarchists. They arrested a railway worker named 00:23:23.309 --> 00:23:26.190 Giuseppe Pinelli. While he was in custody, being 00:23:26.190 --> 00:23:27.970 interrogated on the fourth floor of the police 00:23:27.970 --> 00:23:30.309 station, he fell out of the window and died. 00:23:30.470 --> 00:23:32.609 Fell. That word is doing a lot of heavy lifting. 00:23:32.710 --> 00:23:34.869 A lot. The police claimed it was a suicide. They 00:23:34.869 --> 00:23:37.150 said he yelled, the end of anarchy, and then 00:23:37.150 --> 00:23:40.390 just jumped. The left, and frankly, common sense, 00:23:40.670 --> 00:23:43.710 suggested he was pushed or thrown. So Faux takes 00:23:43.710 --> 00:23:47.000 this horrific tragedy. A man almost certainly 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:49.359 murdered by the police, and he does something 00:23:49.359 --> 00:23:52.480 incredibly audacious. He turns it into a farce. 00:23:52.519 --> 00:23:55.880 A grotesque farce about a tragic farce, as he 00:23:55.880 --> 00:23:58.099 called it. But how do you make a murder funny? 00:23:58.460 --> 00:24:01.720 By focusing on the absurdity of the lies. The 00:24:01.720 --> 00:24:03.740 play features a central character called the 00:24:03.740 --> 00:24:06.759 Maniac. He's a certified madman with a history 00:24:06.759 --> 00:24:09.339 of impersonation who infiltrates the police station. 00:24:09.539 --> 00:24:12.119 Okay. And he impersonates a high court judge 00:24:12.119 --> 00:24:15.440 who he claims is there to reinvestigate the suicide. 00:24:15.799 --> 00:24:18.640 So the police think he's a judge, but the audience 00:24:18.640 --> 00:24:22.500 knows he's completely crazy. Exactly. And because 00:24:22.500 --> 00:24:24.559 the police think he's a superior authority figure, 00:24:24.779 --> 00:24:27.670 they start telling him the truth. about all their 00:24:27.670 --> 00:24:29.490 cover -ups and contradictions, trying to get 00:24:29.490 --> 00:24:31.410 him on their side. Wow, this is brilliant. The 00:24:31.410 --> 00:24:33.950 maniac uses their own twisted logic against them. 00:24:34.009 --> 00:24:35.549 He points out all the contradictions in their 00:24:35.549 --> 00:24:37.650 official reports. Oh, so he jumped out the window, 00:24:37.690 --> 00:24:39.490 but the window closed. How interesting. Tell 00:24:39.490 --> 00:24:41.849 me more. He makes them dance. He makes them tie 00:24:41.849 --> 00:24:44.890 themselves in knots. He forces them to reenact 00:24:44.890 --> 00:24:47.430 the event over and over, making them look like 00:24:47.430 --> 00:24:50.569 bumbling, incompetent idiots. The brilliance 00:24:50.569 --> 00:24:54.069 of it is that by making the police clowns, Foe 00:24:54.069 --> 00:24:57.150 stripped them of their terrifying power. He taught 00:24:57.150 --> 00:24:59.109 the audience that if you can laugh at a monster, 00:24:59.269 --> 00:25:01.809 the monster can no longer paralyze you with fear. 00:25:01.950 --> 00:25:04.650 It's laughter as an exorcism of fear. Precisely. 00:25:04.710 --> 00:25:07.990 And the audience response was electric. But the 00:25:07.990 --> 00:25:11.069 state's response was not. When you make power 00:25:11.069 --> 00:25:13.829 look that ridiculous, power tends to lash out. 00:25:14.849 --> 00:25:18.069 And in 1973, the violence came to their doorstep 00:25:18.069 --> 00:25:20.490 in the most horrific way imaginable. We're talking 00:25:20.490 --> 00:25:23.049 about the abduction of Frank Aram. Yes. And I 00:25:23.049 --> 00:25:24.809 want to pause here because the details are important. 00:25:24.869 --> 00:25:26.390 Understand the price they were willing to pay. 00:25:26.890 --> 00:25:30.029 In March of 1973, Frank Aram was walking near 00:25:30.029 --> 00:25:33.069 their theater. Five men known fascists forced 00:25:33.069 --> 00:25:35.269 her into a van at gunpoint. And this wasn't just 00:25:35.269 --> 00:25:38.079 a random street crime. No. Later investigations 00:25:38.079 --> 00:25:40.099 and testimonies suggested this was commissioned 00:25:40.099 --> 00:25:42.099 by high -ranking officials in the carabiniere, 00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:44.880 the military police, as a direct punishment for 00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:46.619 the couple's activism. What did they do to her? 00:25:46.819 --> 00:25:49.839 They held her for hours. They raped her repeatedly. 00:25:50.019 --> 00:25:52.279 They beat her. They burned her with cigarettes. 00:25:52.380 --> 00:25:55.119 They slashed her with razor blades. My God. It's 00:25:55.119 --> 00:25:58.259 just pure political sadism. They dumped her in 00:25:58.259 --> 00:26:01.359 a park, bleeding and traumatized. The message 00:26:01.359 --> 00:26:04.640 was absolutely clear. Shut up or next time we 00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:06.720 will kill you. Most people would have quit. Most 00:26:06.720 --> 00:26:08.359 people would have taken the first plane out of 00:26:08.359 --> 00:26:10.559 Italy and never looked back. I would have. But 00:26:10.559 --> 00:26:14.039 they didn't break. Franco Rame went back on stage. 00:26:14.319 --> 00:26:16.660 Not immediately, of course, but she refused to 00:26:16.660 --> 00:26:19.859 disappear. Years later, she turned that trauma 00:26:19.859 --> 00:26:22.980 into a monologue called The Rape. I've read the 00:26:22.980 --> 00:26:25.279 transcript of that monologue. It is just harrowing. 00:26:25.400 --> 00:26:27.559 It is one of the most powerful and courageous 00:26:27.559 --> 00:26:30.339 pieces of theater ever written. She performs 00:26:30.339 --> 00:26:33.309 it simply, without melodrama. She reclaims the 00:26:33.309 --> 00:26:35.849 narrative from her attackers. She took the weapon 00:26:35.849 --> 00:26:37.750 they used to try and destroy her, which was fear 00:26:37.750 --> 00:26:39.910 and shame, and she turned it back on them as 00:26:39.910 --> 00:26:42.029 a public accusation. It just highlights that 00:26:42.029 --> 00:26:44.269 their work wasn't just art. This was high stakes 00:26:44.269 --> 00:26:46.670 political warfare. It's incredible that they 00:26:46.670 --> 00:26:49.150 kept provoking after that. There's this amazing 00:26:49.150 --> 00:26:52.569 story about a play called The People's War in 00:26:52.569 --> 00:26:55.380 Chile. This is right after the Pinochet coup 00:26:55.380 --> 00:26:58.339 in Chile in 1973. This is one of the most astonishing 00:26:58.339 --> 00:27:01.279 examples of Faux's ability to completely blur 00:27:01.279 --> 00:27:04.930 the line between theater and reality. Right. 00:27:05.170 --> 00:27:07.869 So the play was about the coup in Chile, but 00:27:07.869 --> 00:27:10.089 Faux staged it in a way that made the Italian 00:27:10.089 --> 00:27:12.869 audience believe a coup was happening right there 00:27:12.869 --> 00:27:15.670 in Italy while they were watching the play. Wait, 00:27:15.730 --> 00:27:17.509 how do you even do that? How do you trick an 00:27:17.509 --> 00:27:19.049 entire audience into thinking the government 00:27:19.049 --> 00:27:21.730 has just been overthrown? He planted actors in 00:27:21.730 --> 00:27:23.980 the audience. Halfway through the show, Police 00:27:23.980 --> 00:27:26.759 would burst into the theater. They started arresting 00:27:26.759 --> 00:27:28.819 people from their seats. They announced over 00:27:28.819 --> 00:27:31.359 the speakers that a military junta had taken 00:27:31.359 --> 00:27:34.079 over Rome. And they had fake radio broadcasts 00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:36.539 playing news of the coup. Yes, over the theater's 00:27:36.539 --> 00:27:38.799 sound system. And people bought it. Hook, line, 00:27:38.920 --> 00:27:41.140 and sinker. You have to remember, this is the 00:27:41.140 --> 00:27:44.380 years of lead. A right -wing coup was a genuine 00:27:44.380 --> 00:27:47.359 daily fear for people on the left. The panic 00:27:47.359 --> 00:27:49.960 was real. The notes say a student in the town 00:27:49.960 --> 00:27:52.480 of Murano actually broke a window to escape the 00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:55.490 theater. And a man in Turin, this is my favorite 00:27:55.490 --> 00:27:58.690 detail of the whole story, was so terrified that 00:27:58.690 --> 00:28:02.089 he ate 10 pages of compromising names from his 00:28:02.089 --> 00:28:04.269 personal notebook because he thought the police 00:28:04.269 --> 00:28:06.410 were coming for him next. He ate the paper. He 00:28:06.410 --> 00:28:09.829 chewed and swallowed 10 pages of evidence. That 00:28:09.829 --> 00:28:12.750 is the level of paranoia and the level of immersion 00:28:12.750 --> 00:28:15.309 that Fo was able to achieve. And he was arrested 00:28:15.309 --> 00:28:16.930 for this, right? Yes, he was actually arrested 00:28:16.930 --> 00:28:20.069 for causing public alarm in Sasseri. But the 00:28:20.069 --> 00:28:22.200 stunt just proved his point. Italy was living 00:28:22.200 --> 00:28:24.579 on the edge of a precipice. So they are conquering 00:28:24.579 --> 00:28:26.720 Italy. They are the most controversial, famous 00:28:26.720 --> 00:28:29.039 and infamous couple in the country. But what 00:28:29.039 --> 00:28:31.359 about the rest of the world? By the mid 70s, 00:28:31.359 --> 00:28:34.000 Faux is becoming a huge international name. His 00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:36.019 plays are being translated and performed everywhere. 00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:40.519 In 1974, he writes, Can't pay. won't pay, which 00:28:40.519 --> 00:28:43.039 in Italian is non si paga, non si paga. Which 00:28:43.039 --> 00:28:45.079 is such a great title. It sounds like a protest 00:28:45.079 --> 00:28:48.279 chant. It was. It documented a real movement 00:28:48.279 --> 00:28:52.519 called autoreduzione or self -reduction. During 00:28:52.519 --> 00:28:55.660 the economic crisis, inflation was skyrocketing. 00:28:55.839 --> 00:28:58.000 So working class women would go to the supermarket, 00:28:58.299 --> 00:29:02.160 see the insane prices and just say, no, I'm paying 00:29:02.160 --> 00:29:04.480 what I can afford. Or they would just take the 00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:07.019 goods. It's Robin Hood in the pasta aisle. Exactly. 00:29:07.450 --> 00:29:10.670 And the play is a farce about two women who loot 00:29:10.670 --> 00:29:13.130 a supermarket and then have to hide the stolen 00:29:13.130 --> 00:29:16.029 food from their law -abiding, very traditional 00:29:16.029 --> 00:29:18.809 husbands and from the police. So how do they 00:29:18.809 --> 00:29:22.230 hide the food? By shoving bags of pasta and cans 00:29:22.230 --> 00:29:24.569 of olives and vegetables up their dresses and 00:29:24.569 --> 00:29:26.369 pretending to be pregnant. Of course they do. 00:29:26.509 --> 00:29:28.589 So you have these sudden miraculous pregnancies, 00:29:28.609 --> 00:29:31.289 bags of salad leaking water down their legs like 00:29:31.289 --> 00:29:33.690 their water broke, police trying to interrogate 00:29:33.690 --> 00:29:35.690 their bellies. It's pure slapstick, but again, 00:29:35.730 --> 00:29:38.109 the core is tragic. People are stealing just 00:29:38.109 --> 00:29:41.049 to be able to eat. It became a global hit. But 00:29:41.049 --> 00:29:42.710 while the rest of the world was embracing faux, 00:29:42.950 --> 00:29:45.309 one country was slamming the door shut. The United 00:29:45.309 --> 00:29:48.509 States. The land of the free. Faux and Franco 00:29:48.509 --> 00:29:51.710 -Ram were repeatedly denied entry visas, 1980 00:29:51.710 --> 00:29:54.859 -1983. The State Department just banned them. 00:29:54.980 --> 00:29:56.859 They used the McCarran -Walter Act, which was 00:29:56.859 --> 00:30:00.200 this old Cold War era law. They accused the couple 00:30:00.200 --> 00:30:03.359 of belonging to organizations supporting terrorist 00:30:03.359 --> 00:30:05.779 groups. Which goes back to their support for 00:30:05.779 --> 00:30:08.319 political prisoners and the radical left in Italy. 00:30:08.579 --> 00:30:10.599 The supreme irony, of course, was that at that 00:30:10.599 --> 00:30:13.880 exact moment, Dario Fo was the most performed 00:30:13.880 --> 00:30:16.339 foreign playwright in the United States. Right. 00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:18.980 Colleges, community theaters, major repertory 00:30:18.980 --> 00:30:21.279 companies, everyone was doing Accidental Death 00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:23.660 of an Anarchist. The man who wrote it couldn't 00:30:23.660 --> 00:30:25.960 step foot in the country to see a single performance. 00:30:26.220 --> 00:30:28.160 The American arts community wasn't having it, 00:30:28.180 --> 00:30:30.519 though. There was this big protest event, an 00:30:30.519 --> 00:30:33.259 evening without Dario Fo in New York. A who's 00:30:33.259 --> 00:30:35.779 who of American culture showed up. Arthur Miller, 00:30:36.099 --> 00:30:39.240 Martin Scorsese, Bernard Malamud, Susan Sontag. 00:30:39.319 --> 00:30:41.740 They all came out to protest the ban. They stood 00:30:41.740 --> 00:30:44.460 on stage and read from his plays. And Fo, being 00:30:44.460 --> 00:30:47.160 Fo, had the absolute perfect response to the 00:30:47.160 --> 00:30:49.059 terrorist accusation. He held a press conference 00:30:49.059 --> 00:30:52.440 in Canada, I think. He did. And he used pure 00:30:52.440 --> 00:30:55.720 cold logic to destroy the U .S. State Department's 00:30:55.720 --> 00:30:58.779 argument. He said, essentially, OK. Let's think 00:30:58.779 --> 00:31:01.200 about this. I am an Italian citizen. Italy is 00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:03.880 a major U .S. ally in NATO. If I'm supporting 00:31:03.880 --> 00:31:06.339 terrorists, I am a criminal in my own country. 00:31:06.599 --> 00:31:09.480 Why haven't the Italian police arrested me? Why 00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:11.539 am I free to walk around Milan? This is a very 00:31:11.539 --> 00:31:14.380 good point. He was implying that by banning him, 00:31:14.440 --> 00:31:16.160 the Americans were insulting the intelligence 00:31:16.160 --> 00:31:18.740 of the Italian authorities. He was saying either 00:31:18.740 --> 00:31:20.720 the Italian police are incompetent for letting 00:31:20.720 --> 00:31:23.960 a dangerous terrorist roam free or they are complicit 00:31:23.960 --> 00:31:26.410 in my terrorism. He turned it into a diplomatic 00:31:26.410 --> 00:31:29.109 incident. He used the maniac's logic again. I'm 00:31:29.109 --> 00:31:31.230 not the problem here. Your logic is the problem. 00:31:31.490 --> 00:31:33.829 Eventually, the ban was lifted. But it just goes 00:31:33.829 --> 00:31:36.809 to show how much fear his words, his jokes generated. 00:31:37.109 --> 00:31:39.450 The United States government was genuinely afraid 00:31:39.450 --> 00:31:41.869 of a clown. So let's fast forward a bit. We get 00:31:41.869 --> 00:31:44.210 to the late 80s and 90s. The political violence 00:31:44.210 --> 00:31:46.809 in Italy has largely subsided. The years of lead 00:31:46.809 --> 00:31:49.430 are over. But the corruption and hypocrisy haven't 00:31:49.430 --> 00:31:52.569 gone away. And Faux finds new targets. In 1989, 00:31:52.970 --> 00:31:54.890 he writes a play called The Pope and the Witch. 00:31:55.289 --> 00:31:59.170 Okay, the plot of this one is, well, it makes 00:31:59.170 --> 00:32:01.490 the pregnant women with stolen pasta look completely 00:32:01.490 --> 00:32:04.250 normal. It is quintessential faux. It's an all 00:32:04.250 --> 00:32:06.910 -out assault on the church's stance on drugs 00:32:06.910 --> 00:32:09.109 and abortion. By having a pope who is addicted 00:32:09.109 --> 00:32:11.309 to heroin. Well, the plot is that the pope has 00:32:11.309 --> 00:32:13.410 crippling arthritis and a phobia of children. 00:32:13.809 --> 00:32:17.109 A witch. who is actually a woman in disguise 00:32:17.109 --> 00:32:20.289 advocating for liberal drug policies, advises 00:32:20.289 --> 00:32:23.089 him on alternative treatments. And yes, through 00:32:23.089 --> 00:32:25.450 a series of classic forcical mix -ups, the Pope 00:32:25.450 --> 00:32:27.569 ends up swinging from a chandelier in the Vatican, 00:32:27.789 --> 00:32:30.490 hallucinating after accidentally injecting heroin 00:32:30.490 --> 00:32:32.569 to try and cure his joint pain. I can see why 00:32:32.569 --> 00:32:34.049 the Vatican wasn't sending him Christmas cards. 00:32:34.289 --> 00:32:36.710 It's grotesque. It's over the top. But notice 00:32:36.710 --> 00:32:39.250 the target again. He's attacking the hypocrisy 00:32:39.250 --> 00:32:41.809 of a wealthy, powerful institution that preaches 00:32:41.809 --> 00:32:44.910 a very strict morality, while... in his view, 00:32:45.009 --> 00:32:46.930 ignoring the suffering happening on the streets, 00:32:46.990 --> 00:32:49.450 the drug epidemic, the AIDS crisis. He's literally 00:32:49.450 --> 00:32:51.549 bringing the post down to the level of a common 00:32:51.549 --> 00:32:54.569 junkie. And then in 1997, the impossible happens. 00:32:54.670 --> 00:32:57.130 The phone rings in Milan. It's Stockholm. The 00:32:57.130 --> 00:32:59.970 Nobel Prize in literature. It was a shock to 00:32:59.970 --> 00:33:03.869 everyone, including and maybe especially to Dario 00:33:03.869 --> 00:33:06.730 Fo himself. He thought it was a joke. He was 00:33:06.730 --> 00:33:08.430 driving on the highway when he heard the news. 00:33:08.910 --> 00:33:10.890 Someone held up a sign to his car, I believe. 00:33:11.170 --> 00:33:14.180 His first reaction was to say, This Nobel business 00:33:14.180 --> 00:33:17.359 is a real comedy. He couldn't believe the Swedish 00:33:17.359 --> 00:33:19.680 Academy would pick a jester. And the literary 00:33:19.680 --> 00:33:21.900 establishment was horrified, right? The serious 00:33:21.900 --> 00:33:24.519 tweed -wearing novelists. Oh, the critics were 00:33:24.519 --> 00:33:26.279 clutching their pearls. They said he wasn't a 00:33:26.279 --> 00:33:28.940 writer. He was a performer. They said his texts 00:33:28.940 --> 00:33:31.200 were just scripts. They weren't literature with 00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:34.339 a capital L. But the citation, the official citation 00:33:34.339 --> 00:33:36.779 from the Nobel Committee is just beautiful. It 00:33:36.779 --> 00:33:39.079 feels like it validates his entire life's work. 00:33:39.299 --> 00:33:42.559 It is perfect. They praised him for, quote, emulating 00:33:42.559 --> 00:33:45.359 the gestures of the Middle Ages, inscurging authority 00:33:45.359 --> 00:33:47.779 and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden. 00:33:47.940 --> 00:33:50.759 They got it. They understood exactly what he 00:33:50.759 --> 00:33:52.839 had been doing for 50 years. They recognized 00:33:52.839 --> 00:33:55.480 that literature isn't just words on a page. It's 00:33:55.480 --> 00:33:58.289 the living act of speaking truth to power. It 00:33:58.289 --> 00:34:00.309 was this incredible international validation. 00:34:00.829 --> 00:34:03.789 But did it mellow him out? Did he become a respectable 00:34:03.789 --> 00:34:06.349 old laureate? Did he start wearing tuxedos and 00:34:06.349 --> 00:34:08.610 going to stuffy galas? Not in the slightest. 00:34:08.710 --> 00:34:12.190 In the 2000s, he found his perfect ultimate nemesis. 00:34:12.230 --> 00:34:15.469 Yeah. A man who was arguably even more theatrical 00:34:15.469 --> 00:34:18.230 than Faux, but in a much more dangerous way. 00:34:18.429 --> 00:34:21.170 Silvio Berlusconi. The billionaire media tycoon 00:34:21.170 --> 00:34:23.690 turned prime minister. The man who owned the 00:34:23.690 --> 00:34:25.809 very TV stations that Faux had been banned from. 00:34:26.139 --> 00:34:28.639 for decades. And Faux wrote a play about him, 00:34:28.739 --> 00:34:32.039 The Two -Headed Anomaly, in 2003. The plot is, 00:34:32.159 --> 00:34:35.800 just listen to this plot. Okay. Vladimir Putin's 00:34:35.800 --> 00:34:38.340 brain is transplanted into Silvio Berlusconi's 00:34:38.340 --> 00:34:40.380 head after an accident. You can't make this stuff 00:34:40.380 --> 00:34:42.900 up. The play depicted Berlusconi strapped to 00:34:42.900 --> 00:34:44.980 a chair receiving electric shock treatment, trying 00:34:44.980 --> 00:34:46.960 to control the aggressive Putin brain that's 00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:49.989 now inside his own head. It was a direct, savage 00:34:49.989 --> 00:34:52.829 attack on Berlusconi's media control, his business 00:34:52.829 --> 00:34:54.610 conflicts of interest, and his authoritarian 00:34:54.610 --> 00:34:56.610 tendencies. And, of course, it led to lawsuits. 00:34:57.090 --> 00:35:00.429 Of course. Senator Marcello Dell 'Utri, a close 00:35:00.429 --> 00:35:02.949 associate of Berlusconi, sued him for defamation. 00:35:03.210 --> 00:35:06.190 And Foge said, I've been doing satire for 40 00:35:06.190 --> 00:35:09.010 years. It is paradox. It is grotesque. You cannot 00:35:09.010 --> 00:35:11.329 sue a joke. He just refused to back down. In 00:35:11.329 --> 00:35:14.469 2006, he even ran for mayor of Milan. His campaign 00:35:14.469 --> 00:35:17.530 slogan was, I am not a moderate. Which is truth 00:35:17.530 --> 00:35:19.530 in advertising, if nothing else. He didn't win, 00:35:19.650 --> 00:35:21.570 but he came in second in the primary election. 00:35:21.750 --> 00:35:24.650 He vowed to chase out the money -grabbing bastards 00:35:24.650 --> 00:35:27.070 from City Hall. And right up until his death 00:35:27.070 --> 00:35:30.219 in 2016, he was still active. He became a key 00:35:30.219 --> 00:35:32.500 ideologue and supporter for the five -star movement, 00:35:32.619 --> 00:35:35.579 the big anti -establishment party in Italy. He 00:35:35.579 --> 00:35:38.659 never, ever stopped engaging with the messy reality 00:35:38.659 --> 00:35:41.500 of politics. He died at the age of 90. An absolutely 00:35:41.500 --> 00:35:43.800 packed life that spanned from listening to stories 00:35:43.800 --> 00:35:46.559 from those mad glassblowers in Lombardy to standing 00:35:46.559 --> 00:35:48.579 on the stage at the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. 00:35:48.820 --> 00:35:51.440 So when we look back at this huge stack of sources, 00:35:51.599 --> 00:35:54.519 the plays, the court cases, the bans, the awards, 00:35:54.639 --> 00:35:57.739 the violence, what is the big takeaway? What 00:35:57.739 --> 00:35:59.840 does the life of Dario Faux teach us today? I 00:35:59.840 --> 00:36:01.699 think the core lesson is about the function of 00:36:01.699 --> 00:36:05.000 laughter. For most of us, most of the time, laughter 00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:07.780 is a break. It's a distraction. We watch a sitcom 00:36:07.780 --> 00:36:10.440 to forget about our bad day at work. It's escapism. 00:36:10.579 --> 00:36:13.780 Right. But for Faux, laughter was never escapism. 00:36:13.860 --> 00:36:17.199 It was a weapon. It was a tool to dismantle fear. 00:36:17.769 --> 00:36:20.650 How so? When you laugh at the tyrant, the tyrant 00:36:20.650 --> 00:36:23.090 becomes small and ridiculous. When you turn the 00:36:23.090 --> 00:36:25.170 police interrogation into a slapstick force, 00:36:25.389 --> 00:36:28.429 the terrifying power of the state evaporates. 00:36:28.449 --> 00:36:30.610 You see the corruption and the lies underneath, 00:36:30.829 --> 00:36:33.889 and you see them for what they are. Absurd. He 00:36:33.889 --> 00:36:35.929 believed that knowledge is only valuable when 00:36:35.929 --> 00:36:38.590 it's applied. And he applied his art directly 00:36:38.590 --> 00:36:41.329 to fight for the dignity of those who had no 00:36:41.329 --> 00:36:44.610 voice, no power. He really was the Gilaire of 00:36:44.610 --> 00:36:46.650 the 20th century. And he paid the price for it. 00:36:46.889 --> 00:36:49.550 The censorship, the arrests, the horrific violence 00:36:49.550 --> 00:36:52.510 against his family. But he never stopped speaking. 00:36:52.769 --> 00:36:54.309 You know, there's a quote from him that really 00:36:54.309 --> 00:36:56.090 stuck with me while reading through the sources. 00:36:56.210 --> 00:36:59.170 It's about drugs, but I think it applies to everything, 00:36:59.389 --> 00:37:02.409 to economics, to media, to power in general. 00:37:02.630 --> 00:37:06.469 He said, rich people consume and use drugs while 00:37:06.469 --> 00:37:10.130 poor people are used and consumed by drugs. It's 00:37:10.130 --> 00:37:12.510 a brilliant inversion. It completely flips the 00:37:12.510 --> 00:37:15.360 narrative of blame. It makes you wonder. In our 00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:18.139 era with social media, misinformation, all these 00:37:18.139 --> 00:37:20.199 new power structures that are so diffuse and 00:37:20.199 --> 00:37:23.079 hard to even see, who are the jesters today? 00:37:23.320 --> 00:37:25.179 That is the question, isn't it? We have plenty 00:37:25.179 --> 00:37:27.119 of comedians. We have plenty of content creators 00:37:27.119 --> 00:37:29.940 making jokes. But who is willing to be banned? 00:37:30.119 --> 00:37:32.699 Who is willing to be sued? Who is willing to 00:37:32.699 --> 00:37:35.400 risk their physical safety to tell a joke that 00:37:35.400 --> 00:37:38.019 exposes a dangerous truth? And maybe the harder 00:37:38.019 --> 00:37:40.340 question is, are we listening to them? Or are 00:37:40.340 --> 00:37:42.519 we the ones calling the police? Something to 00:37:42.519 --> 00:37:45.519 think about. That's it for this deep dive into 00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:49.139 the wild, contradictory life of Dario Fo. Thanks 00:37:49.139 --> 00:37:49.599 for listening.