251-

The megaphone of the movement. Dario Fo and

the working class: 1968-79
TOM BEHAN* University of Kent at Canterbury

Introduction
Parallels between great artists and the times they live in are
frequently drawn, and rightly so. The dominant artistic and cultural
influences of the period in which an artist lived are analysed, as is the
political situation. The prevailing picture is generally one of the great
artist as an individual genius, influenced to varying degrees by
cultural and political developments within civil society.
The purpose of this article is to illustrate a rather different concept:
that great art and artists can be an integral part of a mass political
movement, and that at times the needs and dynamics of the
movement can have a significant influence over artistic development.
The late 1960s and most of the 1970s - ’The Era of Collective
Action’ - as described by Paul Ginsborg in his History of Contcmporary
Italy, were the years in which Dario Fo wrote and performed some of
his most enduring and influential plays: Accidental Dcath of An
Anarchist, Mistcro Buffo and Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!
Rather than a close textual analysis of different versions of the
many different editions of these three well-known plays, lesser-
known plays from the 1968-1974 period will be briefly discussed in
this article, followed by a description of his more practical
collaboration with organized workers until the end of the Seventies.
The predominant concern regards how Fo and his collaborators
engaged with a radical working-class movement during this period,
principally the trade union movement.

New Scene and the working class

Following Fo’s break with the commercial theatrical circuit in 1968

*
Address for correspondence: School of European Culture and Languages, The
University, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF. E-mai): T.H.BehanOukc.ac.uk
0047-2441/00/3003-0251 $5.00 @ 2000 Richard Sadler Ltd

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252
and the forming of the Niioi>a Scena (New Scene) theatre collective, the
circumstances of his theatre changed drastically. The possibilities that
such a gamble would be successful were made extremely likely by Fo
and Rame’s enormous popularity: they had been among Italy’s most
popular actors and dramatists for over ten years, and had increased
their political notoriety considerably in 1962 when they abandoned
the television series Cmz:onissi11la in protest against censure.’
In autumn 1968 they began touring with a new show entitled
Graiide pmlt011lima con bandicre e pupazzi piccoli e 11ledi (Big Pantomime
with Flags and Puppets). The play was extremely ideological in both its
content and form, for example the main characters were called
Capital, King Puppet, High Finance Queen, Bishop, General, and so
on. As one writer has commented, the play ’ridicules the Church, the

Monarchy, the Army and Industrialism, representatives of which are

born from a giant puppet representing fascism . ,2
This was the first time in one of Fo’s plays that contemporary class
struggle, and the nature of class society, were the central issues.
Another of the central themes of the play, used repeatedly over the
coming years, was working conditions, a theme very close to the
hearts of the many workers in the audience. For example, here is a
time and motion man explaining to an industrialist what needs to be
borne in mind when deciding how to run his company:
let’s look in the face. You’re responsible for running a modern
reality
factory, you
so need to make it efficient and capable of winning a slice
of the market (...) This means: lowering costs, increasing productivity,
raising piece rates, reducing the workforce
3
to a minimum ... which in
turn means: sacking lots of workers.~

What was perhaps more interesting than Fo’s change as regards

the subject matter of his play was the change in the circumstances of
his performances. From 1968-70, and to a lesser extent in later years,
Fo’s performances were frequently organized by local branches of the
ARCI cultural association, which in 1968 was made up of 3,145
branches and 451,000 members,and was politically closely linked
to the Italian Communist Party (PCI). All accounts of these
performances report the predominantly working-class composition
of the audience, with often 50-80% of the audience going to ’the
theatre’ for the first time.5
Yet this was no ordinary kind of theatre. Firstly it quickly became
the norm in this period that Fo’s plays dealt not only with working
conditions but with strikes and the political leadership of the
working class. Secondly, the cast insisted on a ’third act’ to their
performance: a debate between the actors and the audience which
frequently went on until the early hours. As soon as they arrived to

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 253
take their seats the audience quickly became aware that this was a
very different kind of theatrical company, as the people they saw
taking their tickets, putting out the seats, fixing the lights, etc., were
the very same people they would then see performing on stage.
Most of Fo’s performances in 1968-70 took place in Case del popolo
(Hollses of the People); local centres of working-class debate and
entertainment set up by the socialist movement around the turn of
the century (see below), thereby illustrating very tangibly his close
connections with the trade union movement. One example of
workers’ response is contained in the February 1969 edition of the
Genoa dockers’ monthly, which published a two page debate on a
recent performance of Grnnde pnntornirna The writer of the main
...

article understood that Fo and New Scene ’intend to stimulate the

audience, who are obviously treated as a microcosm of the working-
class movement, and from this stimulation they try to create a more
precise awareness of reality and the &dquo;anger&dquo; which is needed to
change things, the rejuvenating of a class hatred which makes a clean
break with &dquo;compassion&dquo;’.6
With hindsight, what Fo and the entire movement born out of 1968
were starting to expose, despite the PCI’s denials, was the party’s

steady move away from any notion of communism;’ part of this

distancing was revealed by the fact that many PCI activists now had
a simplistic understanding of Marxist classics. The explicit Marxism
of Fo’s theatre revealed this contradiction quite sharply, again as the
article in the dockers’ monthly observed:
Fo’s argument is substantially a Gramscian one - but we love to talk
about Gramsci rather than read him - and the same could be said for
Lenin. This is why it would be a good thing to establish a common
agreement by which each time these men are mentioned, that one also
cites which of their writings have been read. Such a proposal is
extremist and paradoxical, but it is intended to underline the need to
cease indulging in approximations.

Fo’s reading of Gramsci, or alternatively Gramsci’s interest in

working-class and popular culture, was to find its purest and most
famous exposition in Mistoro Baffo (MB). Yet even in Grande
pmltomi11la, a year before the première of MB, ordinary workers were
receptive to Fo’s message. A clerk in the dockers’ union wrote that Fo
was trying ’to break open the &dquo;intellectual cage&dquo; by offering workers
an alternative choice: you can either see a show for escapism, to use it
as opium, or go to a show which, even through laughter, makes you
reflect using the light of reason.&dquo;
What is also interesting is how local unions promoted these shows
to their members. In Brescia the same play was put on by the

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254

provincial branch of the FIOM engineering union. Three weeks

before the show local activists were sent a circular informing them that
the performances ’would be followed by a debate between the actors
and the audience’, and that tickets could only be bought before
the shows at the FIOM offices, at the price of £7.85 for three
performances.9 A second leaflet outlined the appeal of the per-
formances : ’they deal with issues which due to their revolutionary
nature are ignored by bourgeois theatre and its traditional audience,
and banned from television.’’°
Two new shows were presented in the following season (1969-70),
the first being Legami pllre che tanto io spacco tiitto lo stesso (Chain Me
Up and I’ll Smnsh Everytlll1lg Anyzvay), which was made up of two
single-act pieces. The first piece, Il telaio (Tlm Loom), dealt with
unregulated workers in cottage industries - an employment category
which at the time amounted to almost two million people.
The second piece was called Il fll11erale del padronc (The Boss’s
Funeral), and was based on a real event. Workers at a factory near
Milan, Magnctofoni Castelli, had been conducting a series of strikes
which culminated in an occupation. However, when the mainly
women workers were eventually evicted from the factory they

spontaneously improvised the funeral of their boss outside the gates

as a further act of defiance.&dquo;
Fo’s play transforms these real-life events into a theatrical
performance, and as such is a clear example of how his writing at this
time was influenced and directed by working-class struggle. Many of
the themes presented the previous year are used again: bad working
conditions, speed-ups in production, etc.
Yet with the ’Hot Autumn’ of working class struggles then in full
swing Fo introduced several new issues, which mirrored many of the
developments of the preceding twelve months. The piece begins with
a discussion between workers about to be evicted from an occupied

factory, who debate the positive results of their occupation. One

worker makes the instinctive comment: ’Finally the whole town
knows what a great time we have working inside this shithole.’
Whilst another worker takes a less emotional view: ’For the first time
we’ve got union recognition within the factory. 12
This allows Franco to introduce an argument which came to dominate
much of the left over the next few years: the role of the trade union
bureaucracy. She outlines how some bureaucrats try to put a positive
gloss over a clear setback: ’He’s a triumphalist: waving around the
union’s banner of victory just when we’re throwing in the towel.’’3
However, she also highlights a far more important notion: that it was
rank and file workers and not national union bureaucracies who had
transformed industrial relations in 1969, creating among other things

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 255
Factory Councils within many workplaces: ’I’ve been told that
right at the beginning of things at Pirelli and Fiat, your unions were
overtaken by the workers ... they [union bureaucracies] tried to put a
brake on things.&dquo;’
It would have been immediately obvious to audiences that Frnrtca
represented newly radicalized workers influenced by the student
rebellion of 1968. Equally, Secondo represented the union bureaucracy,
and by implication the PCI, who were becoming increasingly
exasperated by opinions such as Fraiica’s:
this obsession with taking the piss, that we’re all part of the system,
that we tell people to obey the law, that we pour water on the tlames of
working-class revolt ... Now she’s talking just like some idiot student
playing at being a revolutionary ... and then once they’ve shot their
mouth off they’ll go back home to daddy who’ll keep them in the style
they’re accustomed to. Maybe a four-wheel-drive with the standard
extras: long-legged girl with nice tits.’5

The overall tone of the play is that it had been written fr0111 within
the movement of that period, not from without. Naturally, however,
it is still full of Fo’s standard repertoire: grotesque situations,
mistaken identities and so on. Yet in an example of the symbiosis
between political initiative and theatre which characterized Fo’s
activities in this period, the impact of the real-life event and
publication of the script in the union journal created echoes
elsewhere. As Fo recounts of The Boss’s Funeral, New Scene:
toured with it throughout Italy. But when we arrived in Ragusa, in
Sicily, the workers had already put it on two weeks before. (...) it was
an even more amazing spectacle: there were some real professional

mourners, who had been paid, some fireworks, etc.

6
So we leamt from workers, and workers leamt from us.’6
The second new play in the 1969/70 season was L’operaio co?iosce
300 parole, il padrone 1000 per qiiesto llli è il padrone (The Worker knows
300 words, the Boss knows 1,000 - That’s Why he’s the Boss), which was
perhaps even more provocative, and indicative of Fo’s impending
break with both ARCI and the PCI. The play was set in the very kind
of building where Fo was performing in this period: a Casa del
popolo.
These premises literally embodied much of the history of the
Italian workers’ movement, and the performance of this play within
their walls starkly revealed their political transformation, which was
roughly in line with the political changes within both trade unions
and left wing parties. The first Case were set up in Tuscany and
Emilia in 1899, and were the meeting places of the local Call1ere del
Invoro (Trades Councils). They ’functioned as a hiring hall and workers’

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256

labour exchange, club, educational centre and headquarters’. 17 Due to

their central role in organizing both unions and members of the
Socialist Party, the fascists made them a central target in their rise to
power, destroying 59 Case during the first six months of 1921 alone.&dquo;
After Liberation they were reappropriated by workers as part of a
widespread desire for political discussion and activity. For example,
in the province of Florence alone 168 new Case were set up between
1945-56. But these new Case took on a broader role than their pre-
fascist counterparts. Although they still functioned as a meeting and
organizing centre for the left, entertainment now became part of their
activities: dances were now held, films were shown, children’s and
sports activities were organized too.’9 Canteens, bars and billiard
halls were also set up.
Yet the growth in cinema attendance, the increasing availability of
television and private transport, all led to the Case becoming less
appealing as a place of mass entertainment by the end of the 1950s.
At the same time the general defensive circumstances of the union
movement, and the PCI’s rigid Stalinism, equally contributed to the
increased political sterility and inactivity of the Case. By the end of
the 1960s they were becoming a meeting place mainly for older
people, and the vibrant political life of previous decades had largely
been transformed into an occasional ritualized debate.
To set a political play in a Casa dol popolo, and perform it in the very
same building, was therefore striking at a raw nerve. L’opernio
conosce ... begins with building workers coming into a Casa because

they had been hired to transform the library into a billiard room, but
in the course of the play the books literally ’come to life’ on stage
with the authors, such as Antonio Gramsci, Vladimir Mayakovsky
and victims of Stalinist show trials, suddenly appearing and
discussing their ideas and experiences. The issue of Stalinist show
trials was a very delicate question within the PCI, and the fact that
some were briefly acted out on stage meant that the nature of
Stalinism often dominated the post-performance debates.
The second strand of political criticism running through the play
was the need for communists to maintain a sophisticated political

awareness, often by reading the books discussed in the play - and the
fact that the PCI was no longer stressing this need amongst its
membership is stated fairly overtly. The conclusion of the play is also
quite striking in this respect: on the basis of what they have heard the
workers decide to leave the library as they found it.
Although Fo’s criticism unsettled the PCI hierarchy, this kind of
message created widespread sympathy and agreement amongst
workers. A leaflet produced by the Verona branch of ARCI in April

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 257
1970 was addressed to ’Workers, Students!’ and outlined the theme of
L’operaio COlIOSce...:
culture as awareness of your own history, a living awareness, not a
museum awareness. An analysis of the past is useful in developing a
critical awareness and to transform capitalist society into a socialist
socie ty. 20
This ARCI leaflet illustrates very well how Fo’s virtually
message had no problem in
revolutionary political gaining a mass
audience:
The library comes back to life, books will no longer be things which are
dead. Culture will no longer be the privilege of the rich and lazy, but of
those who want to give the organisations and parties of which they are
part the creative contribution of their own intelligence and actions.
Again, the organizers made it clear how they expected the evening
to be structured, whilst also illustrating that this was much more than
just theatre in a conventional sense:
The two shows have two acts, but as ever the third act consists of a
debate which will see workers, women, students, young and old
comrades, discuss with the cast - not about theatre as an end in itself
which always used to be the case - but about a theatre which has
become criticism and political action. This is the thing that really matters.

But the political criticisms contained both in Fo’s plays, and voiced
in the debates, could not be tolerated passively by ARCI and PCI
leaders. After the national premiere of the shows discussed above in
November 1969, a furious argument broke out during the post-
performance debate. According to an account in the weekly news
magazine L’Espresso, a national ARCI leader told New Scene: ’you’re
touring with this show - not to illustrate the exploitative conditions
people work in - but to change the PCI. What gives you the right to
do this? You should think seriously about your views. The show
needs some rewriting.’ What is revealing isn’t so much the opinion of
this one leader, but the response of the audience, according to the
journalist: ’As he suddenly sat down cries of &dquo;Censorship, censorship!&dquo;
were heard throughout the theatre.’’’ Despite, or perhaps because of,
the widespread popularity of Fo’s performances, by early 1970 it had
become a frequent occurrence to read critical remarks of Fo’s plays in
the PCI daily l’Uiiit9 and the weekly theoretical journal Rl1lascita.
The radical criticisms made by Fo and other members of New Scene
against the PCI were part of a growing movement to the left of the
party, whether it be within the student milieu, working-class
activists, or even radical artists. Yet these new radical and
revolutionary ideas had not been thought through fully, given that

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258

many people had only broken with the PCI and the union
bureaucracy in the heady months of 1968 and 1969. The New Scene
collective was as much a microcosm of these developments as any
other group of people; consequently there were some who became
thoroughgoing revolutionaries whilst others continued to harbour
the belief that the PCI leadership could be pushed massively to the
left under pressure from its rank and file. A representative example
of this latter viewpoint was once put forward by a member of New
Scene during a post-performance debate: ’our work isn’t aimed at
people who are full-time leaders. (...) In reality if we have any real
criticism to make it is essentially aimed at the rank and file (...) when
a leader makes a mistake it is because the rank and file has not made
itself heard. 22

The Commune and revolutionary politics

Whilst Ne7.o Scene had experienced an uncomfortable internal existence
since 1968, and had developed an increasingly fraught relationship
with the PCI, outside political developments strongly contributed to
the founding of La Comune (The COm11l11ne) theatre co-operative in the
autumn of 1970. In comparison to New Scene, this was to be an
unequivocally revolutionary collective throughout the 1970s.
It is no coincidence that at roughly the same time as The C011111l1l11e
was founded the explosion of revolutionary thought which had
mushroomed in 1968 began to take on an organizational form with
the coalescing of political groups such as Lotta Continua, Potere
Operaio and AV{l11g11ardw Operaia, as well as newspapers such as 11
Mmlifesto.2’ These organizations either had significant numbers of
manual workers as members, or were able to influence even wider
numbers of non-members. For example, in 1971 a major survey
reported that 15% of shop stewards in 85 Milan factories took part in
the activities of the revolutionary groups.&dquo;
One of the most pressing issues for workplace militants was what
attitude to take towards the newly created Factory Councils, a new
workers’ body which had emerged from the Hot Autumn of 1969. As
one writer has commented, their emergence was a very varied

phenomenon: ’the relationship between these new bodies and the

official unions did not conform to a single pattern.’‘5 What was
uniform about their nature, however, was that they were the creation
of the rank and file, as one worker stated at the end of a show: ’I
would like for it to be recalled that during the recent workers’
struggles the trade unions were renewed following a push from
below, which was born from the rank and file committees at Pirelli.
This isn’t a Maoist who is saying this, but a communist.’26

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 259
This last comment referred to the accusation which the PCI was
now using more and more frequently: that Fo, The COmmll1le, and his
supporters were Maoists. Whilst this is broadly correct, as Maoism
was generally perceived as being a more radical alternative to the

PCI, many workers therefore had also begun to look upon Maoism
quite favourably. Once again, the facts show that during this period
the PCI faced significant political competition to its left: another
major survey held at this time revealed that 12% of Factory Council
delegates were sympathetic to the revolutionary groups.&dquo;
The other standard criticism made by the PCI, again true to some
degree, was that considerable numbers of those who attended Fo’s
shows were students. However, many others were manual workers;
and during the late Sixties and early Seventies these joint debates
were very common throughout Italian cities. Many of these students
were either members or sympathizers of these new
revolutionary
organizations, and often expressed themselves quite eloquently:
the task of workers who are living through this experience isn’t to close
themselves within their Factory Council. They shouldn’t say: we don’t
like Factory Councils, we repudiate trade union type organizations,
we’re going to build a red trade union. The real problem is defeating
the positions held by union leaders, who today are the conveyor belt
for that reformist party mentioned in the song. (...) the problem is
getting the Factory Council to work so that it is directly controlled by
rank and file workers. (...) what mustn’t happen is the very thing
which has occurred in so many other factories, which is that the
Factory Council is made up of a list which the unions have already
chosen. So workers are presented with the same old elections, the same
parliament. 28
little

It could easily be that such detailed advice from a

imagined
student, given to what were often middle-aged manual workers,
would be treated with scorn. But such was the climate of debate, both
at Fo’s shows and elsewhere, that their comments were frequently
greeted warmly. The reason for this was purely political and not
paternal: workers were breaking with their traditional political and
workplace organizations and were therefore open to many new
ideas. As one worker put it: ’These students, these extremists, they
haven’t just been made up in a factory, you know. We didn’t bring
them here so they could get up your noses. These extremists are
obviously around because the traditional organizations of working-
class parties have gone into crisis
The issue of what attitude to take towards Factory Councils was a
crucial one for both radical workers, the revolutionary groups and
student activists during the early 1970s. And this very issue, together
with many other working-class actions, were presented in Morte e

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260
resllrrezione di iiii pllpazzo (Death and RE’SIIYYPCt1011 of a Plppet) in late
1971. This was essentially a major rewrite of Grande pmltomlma, but
many of the additions and changes were the result of political events
which had occurred during the intervening’ three years. It is
interesting to observe Fo’s reasons for deciding to rewrite the script,
and how a new version was finally agreed upon:
we realised that it couldn’t remain unchanged after 1969 with its
struggles for workers’ contracts, the ’hot autumn’ with its huge wave
of workers’ and students’ struggles, and the massacres perpetrated by
the State. The script for the second version of the play was debated at a
discussion meeting attended by the main workers’ vanguards of
various factories in Milan. There was a second discussion at the first
dress rehearsal.3o

Consequently during the second act a placard is held up to

introduce the: ’Hot Autumn. Workers struggles.’~’ The new methods
of struggle are illustrated, such as wildcat strikes, during which a Fat
Capitalist complains: ’nobody comes and warns me three or four days
beforehand ... this is what we had always agreed!!? That way I had
all the time I needed to get organized...&dquo;’ ’Chessboard’ strikes are
also mentioned, in which workers in a variety of specific areas within
a factory would take staggered short-term action which overall

provoked chaos. Other new developments are also noted, such as

white collar workers and students joining picket lines.33
One of the most dramatic moments of this new material occurs
when the Dragoll - an angry and confident working class - is
advancing on the ruling class, who discover to their horror that trade
union officials are no longer controlling workers’ actions: ’There are
only workers at the head of it (...)Those lot from the CUBs... rank
and file committees ... extremists!’&dquo; In desperation the ruling class
call on a trade union official to calm things down, but he admits he is
no longer in control: ’they say I’m a dirty little bureaucrat !’35 As the
momentum of the Hot Autumn reaches its height, the trade union
official suddenly appears from the head of the Dragon, and the
Bourgeoisie asks him ’but how did you manage to get past those
people on the Factory Councils?&dquo;’
The official’s reply mirrored real life events: ’A temporary
distraction was all that was needed ... a slight disorientation.’37 The
predominant view held by the revolutionary groups in this vital early
period was one of boycotting Factory Councils, as they were clearly
reformist organizations, and would act as a Trojan Horse which
would eventually - once workers had been incorporated within their
structures - transport workers back within the citadel of traditional
reformist politics. The key weakness in this argument was that

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 261

Factory Councils were viewed positively by the vast majority of

workers, and to boycott them therefore led to significant political

isolation within the workplace. Indeed, by July 1972 the three main
union federations had agreed that Factory Councils were the unitary
representatives of all unions represented within a workplace. 31
The sectarian position of the revolutionaries was largely a product
of their inexperience, the fact there were three competing groups of a
similar size, and the far greater resources and experience of the PCI
and the trade union bureaucracy. As the trade union official
comments: ’They’ll never manage to lead the movement on their
own ... poor bastards, until they’ve got the party behind them ... a

revolutionary one obviously....’39

Whilst the scenes and arguments of class struggle were very
popular, a sectarian tone emerged at a more ideological level, due to
the frustration of revolutionaries at not being able to definitively
undermine the PCI’s dominant influence within the working class.
Consequently Fo had no qualms about naming one of the main
characters Pnlmiro, after Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the PCI from the
late 1920s until his death in 1964. Palmiro repeatedly refuses to call the
working class to action by saying that there would be elections soon,
or in a vaguer fashion blithely stating ’it’s all a question of tactics.’
Fo’s working-class audience, which still generally identified with
the PCI, responded negatively to these criticisms. As a collective Tulle
Commune came to the conclusion that these comments had been too
sectarian and divisive, and in September 1972 published their own
criticism of the show:
it attacked revisionism [the PCI] in an unintelligent fashion. Given that
revisionism was attacked essentially at an ideological level and that
nothing was really developed beyond its destruction - not even the
germs of suggestions or creation of some kind of political
reorganisation - this has allowed the revisionists to attack us as anti-
communis s. 40

Political downturn and defensive struggles

These sectarian tendencies began to disappear within The Commune
during 1973-74, probably as a result of two quite distinct
developments. The first was simply revulsion at the endless
arguments, expulsions and political divisions which periodically
erupted within the co-operative. Following a particularly bitter split
in summer 1973, in which Fo and Rame were left virtually on their
own, their artistic work began to revert to being more of an
individual rather than collective effort.

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262
The second reason for an end to sectarianism was the change in
the working-class movement: by late 1973 a serious economic
recession was beginning,&dquo; and workers started to lose their jobs,
whilst other workplaces decided to go into occupation against job
cuts or closures. This meant that many workers needed to find
support for their specific struggle. And on a broader and more
artistic level, the evils and absurdities of capitalism became a more
compelling and unifying topic in Fo’s writing and performances as
opposed to criticism of the PCI.
These last two paragraphs provide some contextualization for why
Fo stopped writing his more ideological or didactic pieces in 1973,
returning to stress conventional farce again with Can’t Pay? Won’t
Pay! in late 1974. However, his continuing close links with workers
had not changed, in some senses they had increased since the
occupation of the Pala::ina Liberty in March 1974, a move that was to
create both a stable performance environment for Fo, and a meeting
point for the Milan far left over the next few years. Fo acknowledged
the collective debt he incurred in writing the first version of Can’t
Prry? 2 Woii ’t Pay! in an editorial note:
Although the material composition of the
text is to be attributed to me
alone, from the reading of the first draft to actual performance the
script was discussed many times. And not just with the collective [The
C011l11l10le] alone, but above all with both groups of workers, and the
political vanguards of several Milan factories, who intervened in great
numbers during the meetings held to revise the script. And following
these debates we realized there were gaps in the text, that certain
scenes had to be constructed differently. The comrades’ really
constructive criticism convinced us to change and rewrite all of the

concluding section.’2
Not only did plays such as Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! have less of an axe
to grind in a political sense, the key change in terms of his
relationship with the working class was that Fo began to frequently
perform both Mistero Buffo and other plays within occupied
workplaces.
Piero Sciotto, the main organizer of many of these shows, explains
that the most important facet of Fo’s artistic performance was
dictated by political considerations:
You asked political questions rather than technical questions
beforehand (...) It was always important for Dario that he was told
what had been happening: why, how, who, what - even two hours before
the show if no other time was available. That way Mistero Buffo was
brought closer to the specific situation (...) Dario sometimes
improvised during his introduction. Maybe he would dramatize a
particular event (...) He would do a monologue on somebody’s

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 263
sackingor how it had come about, on how a worker
got injured, or
how the occupation had started (...) And this was the bit that always
went down the best. 43

One of the first significant performances of this kind was held at

the Feda textile factory on the outskirts of Milan in September 1973.
The overwhelmingly female workforce had occupied the factory in
May, and had begun producing garments under workers’ control the
week before The Co 111 111 111 ll11e’S show. Since this decision was made a
delegation of workers had visited from Turin, and Pirelli workers in
Milan had ordered 1,500 items of underwear from the Factory
Council, which had organized both the production and sale of these
goods, as well as inviting The Commll1ze. Including this show, The
C011l11lll11e had raised a total of £2,300 for the factory, and had set -

themselves an overall target of £10,770.~~

None of these activities were occurring in a political and industrial
vacuum. Whilst both the PCI and trade union leaders would
formally
support defensive struggles and some factory occupations during
this period, very little was done to actively further the cause of these
occupations. 15 Fo’s support and intervention in a struggle constituted
a delicate political issue, particularly for trade union leaders. Sciotto
recalls that union bureaucrats ’either did nothing in the first instance;
and once the whole thing got moving it was difficult to stop it
because it was that factory’s show.’ Often this lack of reaction was not
due to bureaucratic inertia, it was probably the result of the balance
of forces within the union movement:
during those years there was a huge struggle within the unions. At
that time the union leaders were remote, and there were also Factory
Councils. So you had links with union shop stewards, who also
worked on the assembly line. (...) These people knew about Fo’s work
and supported it in various ways. And when there were struggles they
came looking for you, they knocked on your door. 16

popularity meant that his shows became financially important

Fo’s
to many occupations, as well as constituting a vital outlet in
publicizing the dispute. The following description by Sciotto gives a
very good general picture of their usefulness for workers in struggle,
and there are many parallels with the reasons behind improvising a
funeral outside a factory in 1969 - the real-life event which inspired
Fo to write The Boss’s Flllleral:
the whole town, the entire area, would turn up. The show was
performed as a result of thousands of people entering the factory. And
this was the very point: maybe people already knew the factory was
occupied, now they took part in the occupation (...) There were
petitions, collections, etc, a thousand initiatives started up thanks to

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264
this increase in solidarity. Maybe before the factory had been in
occupation but nobody knew anything about it: the newspapers didn’t
talk about it, in town some knew and others didn’t. But in this fashion
the media talked about it because Dario Fo went there.

As a theatrical and political collective, The Commiiiie understood

perfectly well that practical solidarity had both a material
importance, and a political importance in raising the self-confidence
of workers fighting to keep their jobs - as they witnessed the scale of
support they could easily command. Sciotto tells of a factory named
Lusvardi, with which The Commune began working with in early 1975:
so we went to take part in one of their meetings, where, thanks to the
unions’ lack of resistance, the line of voluntary redundancies was
being accepted. Luszerdc is a glass~~orks which amongst other things,
produces drinking glasses; (...) obviously without trying to dominate,
we told them of how in other factories production without bosses had

managed to break through the media blackout and the bosses’

blackmails. So the form of their struggle changed, and the production
of glasses ’without bosses’ was agreed upon. We were expected almost
immediately afterwards in Bologna with Mistero 8uffo so we took 8,000
glasses, which were all sold at a solidarity price to the 4,000 members
of the audience. The show ended with everyone raising their glasses as
a sign ofsolidarl ty.47
Sometimes The C011l11111ne would propose shows themselves: for
example, in January 1975 the Factory Council of the Metnltneccnnica
factory in Solbiate, a small town near Varese, received the following
telegram from Milan: ’As a sign of our active solidarity with your
fight for jobs we propose Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! in Varese 4 February. 48
Occasionally announcements were made in left-wing papers: for
example in November 1977 a short advert appeared stating that
Franca Rame was available to perform some giiilliirate with the
Sicilian storyteller Ciccio Busacca for ’factories in struggle’, and
invited interested parties to ring a telephone number.’9
It was far more common for workers to contact The COmmll1le,
however, generally either through a casual meeting or formally by
letters. A certain Franco Ceccarello wrote to The C011l11llme in late 1974
from Padua, explaining that the local engineering union federation,
the FLM, had managed to obtain a booking at the 3,000-seater
Palazzetto dello Sport. He proposed a benefit show for the 180 workers
of the Site factory, who had not been paid for the last four months.
They were currently occupying the factory, and producing goods
under workers’ control.* The Commune eventually performed Can’t
Pay ? Won’t Pay! to 4,500 people, with 2,000 being left outside.5’ The
profits of the show amounted to €10,260.~ What is interesting is that

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 265
this show appears to have been put on because the FLM had been
pressurized into making the booking, given the vibrancy of the
occupation and the subsequent support workers had built up across
Padua. A similar sequence occurred as regards a show for an
occupied factory named Moretti in Turin: ’Initially the council didn’t
want to give him the Piiliizzetto dello Sport, but had to give in to trade
union pressure.&dquo;’
The tense relationship between the revolutionary Fo and the
parliamentary-focused unions began to mellow over the coming
years, mainly due to a changing political situation. Occupations
started to turn into long-drawn-out affairs which became more of an
extended ritual of resistance than a struggle to obtain the demands
which were raised at the start of the struggle. For example, in
October 1977 Fo and Rame performed to 5,000 people inside the
Singer factory just outside Turin. The factory had been occupied for
over two years, and several hundred workers had either found
another job or moved back to the south.&dquo; Eighteen months before
this benefit show Fo had already met Singer workers and commented
on their situation:

If Siager workers come and ask for an opportunity to talk about their
own situation then it’s because we’re the only people who can provide
them with a platform. They haven’t got one within the union
movement any more, because the unions are just messing them about.
So the only way to talk about your own situation is to go somewhere
where you’ll be listened to, and where you’ll be given support. 55

By the late 1970s Fo would frequently be performing benefit shows

in large public auditoriums and sports arenas, rather than in
occupied factories. Many of these shows were now being initiated by
union bureaucrats, rather than being simply ignored as they were a
few years earlier. By this time the PCI had managed to convince most
workers that a ’historic compromise’ with the Christian Democrats,
including a ’policy of sacrifices’ which drove down living standards,
was the best thing that could be hoped for.56 Such a move to the right
also explains why Fo’s politics still found a resonance amongst
workers, despite the ongoing crisis of the revolutionary milieu. Using
his typical wit, Fo once described how an audience in late 1974
responded first to his comments on a contemporary scandal:
out of honesty I said that the PCI was the only party not to get caught
with its fingers in the till, and I got an incredible round of applause. I
was stunned, because the scale of that applause made me understand
that 70% of the audience was PCI. (...) Then, when I began talking
about the historic compromise, I got applauded and booed at the same
time: ’I get it, they’re all revolutionary PCI comrades. ;7

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266

By the late 1970s occupations had become quite rare, and then in
1979 sackings began. One very telling example was a benefit show at
Turin’s Palrtsport in support of the 61 workers sacked by Fiat in autumn
1979 with the pretext of being associated with left-wing terrorism - a
defeat for the most combative section of the Italian working class
which presaged the far more definitive defeat in October 1980, which in
turn ’set the pattern of industrial relations for the coming decade’.’ Fo’s
show was organized by the Turin branch of the FLM; 7,740 tickets
were sold at £2.85 each. Once the hiring of the building, publicity and
all other expenses were paid, £17,790 was left to be distributed
amongst the 61 workers.&dquo; A show by Fo in a major public arena was
now a token gesture by union bureaucrats, it no longer constituted a
threat to their ability to exercise control over their membership.
Despite his huge practical support for workers’ struggles during
this period, on a theoretical and artistic level Fo had much to reflect
upon in the second half of the Seventies. Even before the defeats at
Fiat in 1979-80, some fundamental political changes in the 1973-78
period had given him food for thought. Firstly, the three trade union
federations, CGIL-CISL-UIL, held a conference in February 1978 and
formally voted for a policy in stark contrast with many of its
activities over the previous ten years: ’wage restraint and the flexible
use of labour both within and between places of work’.6° Paul

Ginsborg has argued that this led to ’rank and file disillusionment,
the falling away of working-class commitment and the consequent
weakening of both the trade unions’ and the PCI’s bargaining
position’.b’ Secondly, and closely related to these events, was the slow
move to the right of the PCI which had begun with Enrico

Berlinguer’s call for a ’historic compromise’ with the Christian

Democrats in late 1973. Thirdly, the revolutionary left had collapsed
under the weight of its own contradictions by autumn 1976. Fourthly,
the rise of autonomia in 1977 and the increasingly bloody activities of
the Red Brigades throughout the decade all contributed to an end to
’The Era of Collective Action’. 1,2
Given the depth of Fo’s involvement with the working class, it is
not surprising to learn that his art was affected by these events. Not
only did he stop writing his more ideological and pedagogical pieces
in 1973, but both the subject matter and form of his writing changed
too. After La 111arijllana della mamma è la piÙ holln (Mllm’s Marijttrtrtrr is
the Best) in 1976, he broke what had been a habit for nearly twenty
years - that of writing one or two ensemble plays every year - until
Trll111pets and Raspberries in 1981. He began touring abroad, writing
monologues on topics which were more historical than contemporary,
more personal than collective - but these developments lie outside
the scope of this article.

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 267

Conclusion
When Fo’s skills as a writer are analysed a very conventional path is
followed: biographical influences (the local storytellers in his home
town for example), intellectual influences (Brecht, De
Filippo,
Gramsci, Moliere, Ruzante) and so on.
What is often ignored as regards what is arguably the most
enduring period of his artistic creation, 1968-74, is the working
class’s influence on his writing. For some the problem may well be
conceptual: the difficulty for some analysts to conceive that manual
workers in particular possess artistic skills.63 What Fo understood
very clearly during this period was that when millions of ordinary
people start to believe that their opinions matter, that they have the
power to fundamentally change the world around them, then their
self-confidence grows immensely. Fo experienced this both as a
performer in the response he got from working-class audiences, in
the post-performance debates, and in his day-to-day contacts. He
then incorporated this relationship into his writing for a brief period,
which produced some of his best work.
As a Marxist he understood that creativity is an individual
reflection upon the society the artist lives in, rather than art primarily
being the result of individual genius totally cocooned from the
outside world. Looking back on this period in 1989 he could perhaps
see in a clearer fashion how collective discussion
helped his writing:
the stimulation and agreement I got from other people was very
important: even the disputes which occurred beyond a formal level,
including ideological ones; ’why perform theatre?’, ’what kind of
meaning should it have?’ In that context debate and dialectics were
important - also because they stimulated me. It wasn’t as if I easily
went back on the ideas I had, but during the arguments and the
debates I managed to find more ammunition for what I had been
thinking.’
What remains central to understanding Fo’s work in this period is
the unity of art and political activity. As a political activist Fo had
wider concerns than just his own artistic endeavours, as he put it in
1975: ’If I’m concerned about workers it is because, given that I’m a
Marxist, I’m convinced that it will be the working class who will
change things, who will make the revolution.’65 It is this undeniable
link between political activism and artistic creation which often leads
to absurd and patronizing criticism of Fo’s activities, a fairly standard
formulation has argued that Fo was ’led down the blind alleys of
extremism and wishful thinking. In the frenzy of his sincere but naive

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268

revolutionary aspirations to serve the people, he failed to come to

terms with the real and complex needs of the people.&dquo;’
Facts can be harsh arbiters of opinions. Fo’s unparalleled mass
popularity throughout the 1970s and onwards is eloquent and
irrefutable proof that his aspirations have satisfied (working-class)
people’s real needs. Given the subject matter of this article it seems
appropriate to leave the last word not to Fo but to someone else. Who
is he? All he needs by way of introduction is that he was the thirty-
first speaker in a post-performance debate in Empoli:
Excuse me, I’m a worker sacked by Fiat several years ago (...)I would
be so happy if the cast went on like this, going to meet workers, and
that we all try to persuade these workers to come to these shows, for
many reasons. (...)I believe that one of the basic reasons is that there
are some egg-heads at the top of left-wing parties, whose head is so
big
they think they know it all (...) and because they know everything all
they let you do is some leafleting outside a factory. The only time I’ve
seen the positions of these parties
being openly criticized is in places
like this, not in any meetings or on any other occasions. 17

NOTES
1. On the Canzonissima episode, see Tony Mitchell, Dario Fo. People’s Court Jester
(London: Methuen, 1999), 71-5; and Chiara Valentini, La storia di Dario Fo (Milan:
Feltrinelli, 1997), 77-84. Both these books contain comprehensive biographical
and theatrical information on Fo’s career.
2. Mitchell, People’s Court Jester, 92.
3. Dario Fo, Le commedie di Dario Fo, Vol. m (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), 67-8.
4. Stephen Gundle, I comunisti italiani tra Hollywood e Mosca (Florence: Giunti, 1995),
296.
5. See the following document in the private archives of the Compagnia Teatrale di
Dario Fo e Franca Rame (Henceforth CTFR), Nuova Scena: Appunti su
un’esperienza, busta 12A, July 1970, p. 5.
6. Realtà portuali, February 1969. Also held in CTFR, busta 11A. It can be safely
presumed that ’compassion’ (compassione) refers to the line of the PCI.
7. See Paul Ginsborg,A History of Contemporary Italy (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1990), 304-6.
8. Realtà portuali, February 1969.
9. CTFR, leaflet dated 19 February 1969, busta 11A. Throughout this article lire have
been converted into contemporary amounts in sterling. This has been done by
using a table of historical coefficients published monthly by the financial
newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, called Indici Mensili. The December 1999 edition was
used, with figures in lire being converted into sterling using an exchange rate of
3,000 lire to the pound.
10. Leaflet dated 20 February 1969, busta 11A.
11. Rassegna Sindacale, 19 November 1969. Such was the interest in Fo’s work that
this union journal published extensive sections of the script in this issue.
12. Fo, Commedie, Vol. III, 172.
13. Ibid., 173.
14. Ibid., 172.
15. Ibid., 177.
16. ’Dario Foa Vincennes’, Cahiers du Cinéma, n. 250, May 1974, 23.

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 269
17. Gwyn Williams, Proletarian Order (London: Pluto Press, 1974), 25.
18. Ibid., 292.
19. Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, 195-6.
20. CTFR, busta 12A.
21. L’Espresso, 23 November 1969. Quoted in Erminia Artese, Dario Fo parla di Dario
Fo (Cosenza: Edizioni Lerici, 1977), 77.
22. Dario Fo, Compagni senza censura, Vol. I (Milan: Mazzotta, 1977), 131. As well as
containing the text of several of Fo’s plays, these two volumes also contain
hundreds of pages of transcripts of post-performance debates.
23. See Tom Behan, Dario Fo. Revolutionary Theatre (London: Pluto Press, 2000), 42-4;
Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, 312-6; and Chris Harman, The Fire Last
Time: 1968 and After (London: Bookmarks, 1988), 200-19 for a more detailed
account of these organizations.
24. See Roberto Franzosi, The Puzzle of Strikes. Class and State Strategies in Postwar
Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 285.
25. Gino Bedani, Politics and Ideology in the Italian Workers’ Movement (Oxford: Berg,
1995), 156.
26. Fo, Compagni senza censura, Vol. I, 187.
27. Bedani, Politics and Ideology, 156
28. Dario Fo, Compagni senza censura, Vol. II (Milan: Mazzotta, 1977), 202.
29. Fo, Compagni senza censura, Vol. I, 188.
30. Artese, Dario Fo parla, 129-30.
31. Dario Fo, Mortee resurrezione di un pupazzo (Milan: La Comune/Sapere Edizioni,
1971),88.
32. Ibid., 89.
33. Ibid., 90.
34. Ibid., 88. Comitati Unitari di Base tended to be more agitational, or linked to
specific areas of a factory, whereas Factory Councils represented the whole
workforce. In the extremely fluid and path-breaking atmosphere of 1969-73 these
organizational differences were secondary issues compared to overtly political
differences.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 93.
37. Ibid.
38. Bedani, Politics and Ideology, 162.
39. Fo, Mortee resurrezione, 93.
40. See Lanfranco Binni, attento te... ! il teatro politico di Dario Fo (Verona: Bertani,
1975), 79.
41. See Behan, Dario Fo. Revolutionary Theatre, 85-7.
42. Dario Fo, Non st paga, Non si paga!
(Milan: La Comune, 1974), 5. The collective
discussion of Fo’s drafts was a technique first practised in the New Scene period
of 1968-70; see Behan, ibid., 29-30.
43. Interview with Piero Sciotto, conducted by the author.
Il Manifesto, 18 September 1973.
44.
45. An insider’s - and at times very amusing - account of long-term resistance to
closure, albeit set mostly in the 1980s, is given in Antonio Pennacchi’s little-
known autobiographical novel Mammut (Rome: Donzelli, 1994).
46. Interview with Sciotto.
47. Quoted in Claudio Meldolesi, Su un comico in rivolta. Dario Fo, il bufalo, il bambino
(Rome: Bulzoni, 1978), 202.
48. CTFR, busta Soccorso Rosso, ricevute. Telegram dated 18 January 1975.
49. Lotta Continua, 31 December 1977. The title of the show was ’Ciccio Busacca e le
sue giullarate’. See Mitchell, Dario Fo. People’s Court Jester, Chapter One, for an

explanation of the term giullarata.

50. CTFR, busta Soccorso Rosso, ricevute. Letter dated 24 December 1974.
51. Corriere della Sera, 15 February 1975.
52. CTFR, busta 17F, in a hand-written book entitled Contributi a gruppi umanitari e

progressisti, 1967-83. Receipt dated 13 January 1975.

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270
53. Corriere della Sera, 15 February 1975.
54. Gazzetta del popolo, 30 October 1977.
55. Ruggero Bianchi, ’La teatralizzazione permanente. Happening proletario e rituale
della militanza nel teatro politico di Dario Fo’, Biblioteca Teatrale, 21/22, 1978,
164-5. Interview recorded on 28 April 1976.
56. Bedani, Politics and Ideology, 202.
57. Dario Fo, ’Per una nuova gestione degli spazi e degli spettacoli’, in Franco
Quadri, ll teatro del regime (Milan: Mazzotta, 1976), 147.
58. See Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, 404.
59. CTFR; busta Soccorso Rosso, ricevute.
60. Bedani, Politics and Ideology, 235.
61. Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, 390.
62. See Harman, The Fire Last Time, 211-9, on the collapse of the revolutionary
organizations and the growth of autonomia and the Red Brigades.
63. It is surprising that most articles or biographies on Fo, such as the two mentioned
in Note 1, do not mention this influence explicitly. Those who saw the TV drama
Dockers broadcast on Channel Four in July 1999, written by twelve sacked
Liverpool dockers, with Jimmy McGovern and Irvine Welsh, were provided with
a powerful and contemporary antidote to any potential intellectual snobbery.
64. Dario Fo, Dialogo provocatorio sul comico, il tragico, la follia e la ragione (Rome:
Laterza, 1997), 72.
65. Corriere della Sera, 15 February 1975.
66. Lino Pertile, ’Dario Fo’, in Mike Caesar and Peter Hainsworth, Writers and Society
in Contemporary Italy (Oxford: Berg, 1984), 188.
67. Fo, Compagni senza censura, Vol. I, 150-1.

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