Dario Fo

Dario Fo's controversial farce has been seen by over half a million people. It has been performed all over the world, and has become a classic. A sharp and hilarious satire on political corruption, it concerns the case of an anarchist railway worker who, in 1969, 'fell' to his death from a police headquarters window. Simon Nye's witty translation updates and relocates the play close to contemporary England. It premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2003.

TCG is pleased to announce the exclusive United States publication of the dramatic works of Noble Prize-winner Dario Fo. Under license agreement with Fo's Italian publisher Einaudi Editore, TCG will publish the only authorized English translations for the U.S. market. A new volume of the Collected Plays of Dario Fo will be published each year for the next four years. All translations will be by Ron Jenkins, who has worked with Dario Fo, and his wife Franca Rame, for over 15 years. Dario Fo is considered one of the major artists in world theatre today. At 73, Fo has written over 50 plays, which have been translated and performed in over 30 countries. He is also viewed as one of the twentieth century's greatest physical actors and clowns, whose performances of his signature piece Mistero Buffo are legendary in the venerable tradition of the commedia dell'arte. In the words of his translator, Ron Jenkins: "The Nobel committee's decision to honor Fo as a master of literature is a historic tribute to the theatre, which is still viewed by many as literature's bastard child, it is also the first time that the Nobel for the literary arts has been awarded to an actor. This courageous and controversial choice indirectly expands the modern definition of literature to include the power of the spoken word".

These fables spark the imagination, challenge the conscience, and delight the soul. Greed and corruption are Fo's irreverent subjects for this satirical Fellini-esque provocation. Fo convenes courtiers, popes, cardinals, generals, peasants and one man who despite his own earthly appetites and desires becomes a saint.

The play, first publ. 1992 and presented at Teatro Lirico di Milano, in the 16th-cent. language of the sailors of the port of Venice, which mixed neo-Latin idiom with various other languages and dialects.

"Lucrezia Borgia is one of the most vilified figures in modern history. The daughter of a notorious pope, she was twice betrothed before the age of eleven and thrice married--one husband was forced to declare himself impotent and thereby unfit and another was murdered by Lucrezia's own brother, Cesar Borgia. She is cast in the role of murderess, temptress, incestuous lover, loose woman, femme fatale par excellence. But there is always more than one version of a story. Lucrezia Borgia is the only woman in history to serve as the head of the Catholic Church. She successfully administered several of the Renaissance Italy's most thriving cities, founded one of the world's first credit unions, and was a generous patron of the arts. She was mother to a prince and to a cardinal. She was a devoted wife to the Prince of Ferrara, and the lover of the poet Pietro Bembo. She was a child of the renaissance and in many ways the world's first modern woman."--jacket flap.

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