INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON
THE THEATRE OF
DARIO FO AND FRANCA RAME
Bateman Auditorium,
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Friday 26 April (1.00pm)
to Sunday 28 April 2002
ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS
Summaries of speakers' papers and
speakers' details will be posted here
as
they arrive.
CORALIE ALLISON [University of Westminster]: A Chinese "Anarchist":
the afterlife of a classic
SUMMARY: In 1998, almost a decade after the
infamous Tiananmen crackdown, a production of 'Accidental Death Of An
Anarchist' was staged in Beijing. It was an unprecedented success and put
modern 'spoken' theatre, as opposed to traditional forms of theatre, at the
fore of a rapidly changing urban cultural scene. How did this play, written
three decades ago for a political and social situation specific to a precise
episode in Italian history, catch the imagination of a population whose own
experience was, on the face of it, so far removed from european events? Why was
it so relevant to modern chinese society? Is 'Anarchist' a work of local or universal
meaning and can one locality be effectively substituted for another?
TOM BEHAN [University of Kent at Canterbury]: Will
contribute to the round-table discussion on "Translating Dario Fo and
Franca Rame"
Tom Behan the son of an illiterate Irish navvy, began his
career in education by failing his eleven-plus exam. He later enrolled as a
mature university student, and later still even managed to write Dario Fo.
Revolutionary Theatre (Pluto Press, 2000). Some people think he teaches
Italian at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
CHRISTOPHER CAIRNS [University of Westminster]: "Johan Padan:
from Monologue to Animated Cartoon"
Christopher Cairns is Professor of Italian Drama at the University of
Westminster. Previous publications include books on Domenico Bollani, Bishop
of Brescia and Pietro Aretino, 1527-56, as well as writings on
Italian theatre from the Renaissance to the present. He has also translated and
produced extensively for the stage. His latest book is Dario Fo e la “Pittura Scenica”:
Arte, Teatro, Regie, 1977-1997 (ESI, Naples, 2000).
LUCIANA D'ARCANGELI [University of Strathclyde]: "Madwomen in the
Theatre of Dario Fo and Franca Rame"
Luciana d'Arcangeli is a Graduate Teaching Assistant with
the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow since 1998, where she is
currently working on the theatre of Dario Fo and Franca Rame.
Luciana has published a number of articles on the couple’s
theatre with a particular focus on the evolution of female characters. She worked
in the film industry before returning to full-time study.
LISA DURAN [New York University]: "Linking Brushes: An
Examination of Dario Fo's rtistic Adoptions from the Works of Hieronymus Bosch"
SUMMARY: A growing interest in Dario Fo's artwork draws a surprising
connection to one of the most unique Renaissance painters, Hieronymus Bosch.
This examination, in particular, studies the stylistic resemblances between
Fo's sketch for Isabella: Three Sailing Ships and a Con Man and Bosch's masterpiece,
The Garden of Earthly Delights. Painterly qualities that forge these two
artists together also result in a discovery of their similarity in creative
process and satirical ideology.
ED EMERY [Universitas adversitatis]: Thirty Years After: "Pum! Pum! Chi
è? La Polizia!"
Ed Emery has translated extensively the plays of Fo and Rame, and in 1999 was
briefly appointed their "traduttore privilegiato" into
English. He produced the book Dario Fo and Franca Rame Theatre Workshops at
Riverside Studios (Red Notes, 1983). He maintains a Fo-Rame research site
at http://www.oocities.org/dariofoarchive, and is a founder member of Associazione
Licenziati dell'Industria Fo-Rame.
JOSEPH FARRELL: Title to be
announced
Joe Farrell is professor of Italian at the University of
Strathclyde in Glasgow. He is author of Dario Fo and Franca Rame: Harlequins
of the Revolution (Methuen, 2001). Together with Antonio Scuderi he edited Dario
Fo:Stage, Text, and Tradition, a collection of critical essays. He has also
translated various plays and essays by Fo, including The Tricks of the Trade
("Manuale minimo dell'attore") (Methuen, 1998).
BRUNO FERRARO [University of Auckland]: "Dario Fo as
Painter, and Sixteenth-century Erudite Comedy"
SUMMARY: Dario Fo, besides writing alone or in
collaboration with Franca Rame a number of theatrical texts, has also
illustrated several of his published texts: it suffices here to remember the
beautiful plates for Johan Padan a la Descoverta de le Americhe; he has also
designed costumes and settings, publicity posters and theatre programs.
However, his fifty-year old activity as a painter has become more widely known
only in recent years. This paper will focus on those sketches and paintings
which Fo made in the '80s and '90s and which portray scenes for which he drew
inspiration from the novellistica and commedia erudita tradition.
BENT HOLM: "Fo, Farce and Futurism"
Bent Holm is associate professor teaching drama at the
University of Copenhagen. He has published works on the commedia dell'arte and
a monograph on Dario Fo entitled "Den omvendte verden. Dario Fo og den
folkelige fantasi" (Drama, Graasten 1980). He is the translator of
Dario Fo into Danish.
RON JENKINS: "A Talk on Johan Padan"
Ron Jenkins professor of Drama at the Wesleyan University in the
USA.
TONY MITCHELL [University of Technology,
Sydney]: "Archangels Don't Play Pinball in the UK, the USA and Australia:
Translation into Adaptation"
Tony Mitchell is a senior lecturer in cultural studies at the
University of Technology, Sydney. he is the author of Dario Fo: People's
Court Jester (Methuen 1984, 1986, 1999), Popular Music and Local
identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania (1996) and editor of Global
Noise: Rap and Hip Hop outside the USA (2002).
SUMMARY: This paper compares four
English language versions of Archangels Don't Play Pinball, a 'vintage'
Fo play from his 'bourgeois period' in 1959 which contains his first reference
to the giullare. Its highly prolix text was the first of many of
Fo's plays to be published in the Italian theatre monthly magazine Sipario,
raising issues about the impossibility of rendering Fo's performance texts as
literary texts, and Irving Wardle later described it as a
'collector's item' and 'a wonderful piece of legerdemain'. James Runcie's
Scottish adaptation of Archangels for BBC Radio in May 1986 was followed
by my own production of the play at the University of New South Wales in Sydney
in September 1986, which was closely followed by Glen Walford's production of
Ed Emery's translation at the Bristol Old Vic a few days later. Fo
and Franca Rame then directed and adapted Ron Jenkins' translation of the play
in a production at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachussetts,
in June 1987, attempting to produce a topical US version of the play.
Drawing on Tim Fitzpatrick and Ksenia Sawczak's article 'Accidental Death
of a Translator: the Difficult Case of Dario Fo,' which explores in depth the
difference between translation and adaptation, and breaks down theatre
translation into a process of solution of non-equivalences in linguistic
structures, social frames and phenomena, theatrical frames and the exigencies
of performance. I will compare the different versions of the play and explore
how these were generated by their different linguistic, social, cultural and
theatrical contexts, and how, in the words of Roland Barthes, 'the author is re-admitted
as a guest'.
Reference
Roland Barthes. "The Death of the Author." Image, Music, Text.
Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill, 1977, 142-154.
Tim Fitzpatrick and Ksenia Sawczak' 'Accidental Death of a Translator: the
Difficult Case of Dario Fo,' in About Performance: Working Papers 1,
1995: Translation and Performance, Sydney University, 15-34.
GLORIA PASTORINO: "To make people listen, one has to talk to
birds": Dario Fo Meets Francis of Assisi"
SUMMARY: I briefly worked with Dario in 1999 when
he was getting ready to perform Lu santo jullare Françesco in Spoleto.
Mostly, I helped him translate the episodes of the Saint's life he had
selected and written in Italian into a non-existent, pseudo-Umbrian dialect he
intended to use for the stage. I also served as audience, as he was trying out
that difficult language, to see if it would work on stage. It just wouldn't.
The play that opened in Spoleto had been re-translated into the pan-Lombard
koiné we all know and love.
The focus of my broader work on Fo is on the language he uses in the monologues
and on the supposed faithfulness to the sources. My article on the Holy Jester
takes the "newspaper war" that a Franciscan Friar started against the
heretic Fo, as a pretext to investigate how closely Fo used historical sources
to create a Francis that looks, talks and feels a lot like Fo himself. I wrote
about the genesis and structure of the play, the two different languages he
uses and why, and the politics of this Francis.
DAN REBELLATO: Will contribute to the round-table discussion on
"Translating Dario Fo and Franca Rame"
Dan Rebellato is senior lecturer in Drama and Theatre at Royal
Holloway, University of London. His book on mid-century British theatre, 1956
and All That, is published by Routledge. His plays include I am Joseph
Stalin, Heresiarch, Showstopper, Erskine May and Emily
Rising.
ALBERTO SERAFIN will perform at the Saturday nght Gathering
Alberto Serafin is a commedia performer from Northern Italy. He has
been touring Fo's Mistero Buffo for many years.
BEATRICE TAVECCHIO-BLAKE [University of Westminster] "At the origins of Dario Fo's Theatre: gestuality and choreography in Il dito and I sani"
SUMMARY: Very little is known
about the gestualità and choreography of Il Dito and I sani. Analysing the surviving aural and
written records some evidence emerges of the type of theatrical codes used and
of the effects these shows achieved. It is also possible to infer their future
development and recognise them in Fo's later work.
ALESSANDRO VECCHIARELLI will sing songs at the Saturday Night Gathering
Alessandro Vecchiarelli is our resident singer…