Female Parts

The Authors Dario Fo and Franca Rame

Dario Fo is the 1997 Nobel Laureate in Literature whose most famous works include the plays Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can't Pay? Won't Pay!  (both previous Bench productions)  He is also director, stage and costume designer, and on occasion he even composes the music for his plays.

France Rame, his leading actress, has assisted in and contributed to the writing of many of the plays they have produced in their 45 years of theatre together. She has also assumed administrative and organizational responsibility for the Fo-Rame Company.

Franca Rame

Franca Rame was born in Parabiago, a small town in the Province of Milan. That she happened to be born there was pure chance: her family was performing in the town at the time. Her father Domenico, her mother Emilia and her brother, along with aunts, uncles, cousins and other actors and actresses hired on contract, were all part of a travelling theatre troupe touring the towns and villages of Lombardy and Piedmont.

The Rame family's ties to the theatre are very old. Since the late 17th century, they have been actors, and puppet masters, as the occasion required.  With the arrival of the cinema they shifted from puppet theatre to real theatre, enriched with all the "special effects" of the puppet theatre. The family's repertoire ranged from the biblical texts over Shakespeare to Chekhov and Pirandello; from Niccodemi to the great l9th century historical novels - especially those with a socialist or anticlerical bent.

Franca says she has always felt at home on the stage because "I was born there: I was only eight days old when I made my debut in my mother's arms [she played the new-born son of Geneviève of Brabant] ... I didn't say much that evening! "

Dario Fo

Dario Fo was born on 26 March 1926 in San Giano, a small town on Lago Maggiore in the province of Varese. His mother Pina Rota, was a woman of great imagination and talent and his maternal grandfather was also a strong influence;  the young Dario spent childhood holidays at his farm in Lomellina.

Dario spent his childhood moving from one town to another, as his father's postings were changed at the whim of the railway authorities.  In 1940 he moved to Milan (commuting from Luino) to study at the Brera Art Academy. After the war, he studied architecture at the Polytechnic but in 1945 he turned his attention to stage design and theatre décor and begun to improvise monologues.  During his architecture studies and while working as decorator and assistant architect, Dario entertained his friends with tales as tall as those he heard in the lakeside taverns of his childhood.  He later gave up architecture in disgust at the level of corruption he found.

In the summer of 1950 Franco Parenti invited Fo to join his theatre company after seeing him perform a satirical version of the parable of Cain and Abel.  While Fo was performing in Parenti's summer variety show he saw a photograph of Franca Rame he sees at the home of some friends and was thunderstruck!  During the 1951-52 season Rame and Fo meet in person as they are involved in the same production of  "Sette giorni a Milano" by Spiller and Carosso.  Dario's courting technique is drastic: he pretends not to see Franca. After a couple of weeks of this, she grabs him backstage, pushes him up against a wall and gives him a passionate kiss. They are engaged shortly aftwards.

Collaboration

Franca and Dario married in Milan's Saint Ambrose Bascilica on 24 June 1954.  From this moment on, Franca was Fo's main collaborator behind the desk as well as on the stage.  Their company, the "Fo-Rame Company" was established 3 years later in Milan with Dario as playwright, actor, director, stage- and costume designer and Franca as his main text collaborator and leading actress as well as the company's administrator.

Their first tour comprised four one-act farces, and was the first of many long tours around Italy.  The pair built a reputation for drama and sketches which told the stories of real people and yet are often seen as radical and have been subjected to may attempts at censorship.  Strong socialist views led them to lend high profile support to striking workers and often to clashes with the authorities.

Female Parts

In March 1974 in a horrific attach a group of fascists kidnapped Franca and subjected her to an ordeal of torture and rape supposedly to punish her and Dario for their political activism, in particular Franca's work in the prisons since 1970.  She returned to the stage two months later with a performance entitled "Basta con i fascisti", monologues accompanied by a slide show discussing the cultural and political presence of fascism within the Italian state.

In November of the same year Female Parts is performed for the first time.  Titled "Tutta casa, letto e chiesa" the new show mixes the grotesque, comic and dramatic to illustrate the situation of women today. For the first time Rame's name is credited along with Fo's as the author and she performs them alone, and we assume that these pieces were greatly influenced by her experiences.  These plays have subsequently been performed more than 3000 times around the world.  Dario Fo shortly aftward became Italy's most translated author, published in more than 50 countries and in more than 30 languages.

Female Parts was first performed in the UK by Franca at the Riverside Studios in London in 1982, in Italian.  Following rave reviews the English translation was performed at the National by Yvonne Bryceland at the National Theatre.

In October 1997 Dario Fo was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

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