Accidental Death of an Anarchist

Barefoot Theatre Group's next project is the production of Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo's    Accidental Death of an Anarchist. The play is based on actual events surrounding the 1969 death of an anarchist, Guiseppe Pinelli, who was arrested for allegedly bombing a bank at a time when widespread union protests were occurring throughout Italy. During the course of the police interrogation, the anarchist fell to his death when he "flew" out the window. The same day, another anarchist was arrested who was suspected of being the one truly responsible for the bombing. The investigation into the death of the anarchist was buried in the legal system, and the other anarchist was proven innocent after serving three years in jail. See prologue below for more history on Accidental.

The play itself is an incisive satire that exposes, through grotesque comedy, the issues of police corruption and brutality, manipulation of information by the mainstream media, lack of accountability in the judicial system, class privilege, the interest of the state in actually creating tensions and subversive activity in order to justify the need for authoratative exercise of state power in response, and the tendency for the existence of abuses of institutional power to create an outlet for societal indignation that can then be addressed through implementing mere minor reforms or even just empty promises. Using the premise of a "fool" in police custody to expose the shifting stories surrounding the death of the anarchist, the play, first staged in 1970, implicates themes that are even more timely, and urgent, today.

***Prologue from Richard Nelson's 1987 Adapatation of Accidental Death of an Anarchist:

On the night of December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded and killed sixteen people at the Agricultural Bank in Milan. At the same time, another bomb exploded at a bank in Rome, which did not go by without causing casualties, and another bomb was discovered at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Milan police arrested an anarchist, Guiseppe Pinelli, and accused him of the crime. At a certain point in his interrogation, the anarchist flew out the window of the police station. The same day, another anarchist, a dancer by profession, was arrested; he was suspected of being the one really responsible for the bomb in Milan.

Something similar occurred in New York in 1921, when the anarchist Salsedo flew out the window of a police station, around the same time that Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for a crime never proven against them. Their story has nothing to do withthe one we are telling now. But from these stories we can conclude that many anarchists are obsessed by the urge to jump out of the window, because they believe they are able to fly.

It is an illusion of theirs that when they're two or three yards from the ground, they merely have to open their arms and move their feet to fly up again. Some observers have suspected that anarchists are able to fly, but they are also so underhanded that they smash themselves to the groung, just to incriminate the police and other state institutions by dying.

Anyway, the investigation of the death of the anarchist in Milan was filed away in the archives. The dancer in Milan was proven innocent after three years in jail. Public pressure has frequently been exerted on authorities to re-open the investigation of the anarchist Pinelli's death in Milan, but they keep postponing it.

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