[2] Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari (medieval strolling players)[3] and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte.

[18] Their mother, Pina Rota Fo, from a peasant background, wrote a book of reminiscences of the area between the wars, Il paese delle rane (Land of Frogs, 1978).

Among the places in which Fo lived during his early years was Porto Valtravaglia, a glassblowing colony in which, it has been claimed, resided the highest percentage of insane people in Italy.

In 1956, Fo co-wrote and acted with Rame in the Carlo Lizzani's film Lo svitato (The screwball), influenced by Jacques Tati, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

[33] Fo said, "For me the lesson of the cinema meant learning from a technical point of view what audiences had already grasped: a story divided into sequences, a fast pace, sharp dialogue, and getting rid of the conventions of space and time.

Fo used the show to give Italians a glimpse of a type of television resembling the origins of theatre, far removed from the "junk TV" previously produced by the company.

[35] Nonetheless Canzonissima proved popular, attracting millions of viewers, and Rame maintained that taxi drivers in Italian cities would often say they had no work during broadcasts as everyone was watching it.

[35][36] The show's eighth episode—which referenced the dangerous conditions faced by workers on building sites—led to a dispute with the programme's producers, and prompted Fo and Rame to walk out on 29 November 1962.

Fo said: "I wanted to attack those Italian intellectuals who, with the centre-left and the Socialist Party in the government, had discovered power and its advantages and leapt on it like rats on a piece of cheese.

La signora è da buttare (Throw the Lady Out) was the final play Fo put on in the mainstream establishment Italian theatre.

[39] He interpreted the titular lady as "representing American capitalism [... and who just before her death] was elevated above a sink in a Statue of Liberty pose, and then ascended to a heaven packed with consumer goods".

[9] It opened in December 1970,[9] Fo having written it after right-wing extremists and the Italian Secret Service carried out a "terrorist" attack on the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969.

[51][52] Fo and Rame continued to tour around Lombardy and Veneto throughout that year, despite a split in La Comune; the short piece Mamma Togni dates from this time.

According to Chiara Valentini, a member of the audience panicked during a performance in Turin and ate ten pages of what he thought might be compromising names, while in Merano a student broke the glass in an attempt to flee through a window.

[55] In 1974, the company—which had now become Il Collettivo Teatrale "La Comune" diretto da Dario Fo—occupied and cleaned up an abandoned market building in Porta Vittoria (a working-class area of Milan) and dubbed it the Palazzina Liberty.

The council was unsuccessful; the company was allowed to stay temporarily and set about developing facilities such as a library, conference centre, theatre and audiovisual workshops.

), documenting the autoriduzione (self-reduction) movement which had developed during the severe economic crisis Italy was experiencing, and in which people would take what they wished from markets, only paying for what they could afford.

[59] Also in June 1975, Fo, Rame and other members of the company went to China—Fo later used his recollections of the trip in the monologue La storia della tigre (The Tale of a Tiger), with which he toured around Italy in 1978.

Una donna tutta sola (A Woman Alone) was about a housewife locked indoors by her husband who had to deal with a crying baby while fighting off the advances of his disabled, wheelchair-using, pornographic-film-obsessed brother, a man with a telescope, an obscene telephone caller and a former teacher who has fallen in love with her.

[70] In May that year, "An Evening Without Dario Fo and Franca Rame", held in New York, was attended by Arthur Miller, Bernard Malamud, Richard Foreman and Martin Scorsese.

[71] In 1981, with La Commune having been evicted from the Palazzina Liberty, a second version of Tutta casa, letto e chiesa opened at the Teatro Odeon, the first time in 16 years that Fo and Rame performed there.

Fo and Rame began a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department, pledging any damages received to sacked workers and occupied workplaces, the disabled, families of prisoners and other favorite causes.

Fo called a press conference in Milan to explain the grave offence U.S. authorities had caused himself and his wife: "We are Italian citizens who are supposed to have committed the crime of aiding and abetting terrorists in Italy.

[81] The pre-Christmas 1987 performance of The First Miracle of the Infant Jesus on Italian television's variety-lottery show Fantastico led to further accusations of blasphemy from the Vatican; Fo portrayed the titular character deploying bolts of lightning to save other children from a bully.

[84] In 1989, in solidarity with those affected by the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Fo updated La storia della tigre and wrote two monologues Lettera dalla Cina (Letter from China) and The Story of Qu.

Forced to tend the animals on board, a storm casts him adrift in the ocean on the back of a pig until he reaches the coast and is rescued by the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

[citation needed] In 2004, Forza Italia senator Marcello Dell'Utri, on trial at the time for money laundering, sued Fo over references to him in his latest play.

[104][105] Securing 23.4% of the vote in the primary election of centre-left The Union in January 2006, he was ultimately unsuccessful, finishing second to Milan's former police chief Bruno Ferrante.

[108] In 2008, he was among the signatories of an open letter to la Repubblica which called on the state to protect Roberto Saviano, whose life was under threat after exposing the clandestine activities of the Camorra in his 2006 book Gomorrah.

"[110] On 13 October 2016 Fo died at the age of 90 due to a serious respiratory disease which had previously forced him to recover for 12 days in the Luigi Sacco hospital in Milan.