Dario Fo

Winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature, Dario Fo is one of the world's most important contemporary playwrights, forging subversive comedy, clowning, unusual linguistic experimentation, and brilliant playwriting into a comedy of complete originality. In a first-person monologue that bends and mutates language and historical fact, Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas is a brilliant, vividly imagined retelling of Christopher Columbus's voyage to America. Told by a last-minute conscript assigned to clean the shipboard pig stalls, who goes on to be adopted by a tribe of Indians and help them fight conquistadors, it posits a riotous alternate history in which the dynamics between native and white, male and female, history and comedy are never what they seem.

"Adapted by Stephen Stenning Millionaire media boss, Diana Forbes-McKaye, is kidnapped - but this ruthless magnate proves more resourceful than her clumsy abductors. Are things what they seem? Who is in charge? Who masterminded the abduction? Who has the television rights to this premier media event? Into this cocktail of chaotic double-dealing, Fo adds a gun-toting priest, a deranged altar boy, a kidnapper hiding in the fridge, pyromania and an explosive climax. "

Ein weltliches Mysterienspiel: "Fo's herausragender Geniestreich." (Peter O. Chotjewitz) INHALT: Der Aufstand von Bologna. Das Flattermäuschen. Lucius und der Esel. Rose, frisch und duftend. Gesang der Flagellanten. Der Kindermord von Bethlehem. Moritat vom Blinden und vom Lahmen. Die Hochzeit von Kanaa. Die Geburt des Spielmanns. Die Geburt des Leibeigenen. Die Auferstehung des Lazarus. Bonifazius VIII.

W"Includes the plays The Pope and the Witch and The First Miracle of the Boy Jesus Two plays by the winner of the 1997 Nobel prize for Literature and one of Europe's greatest comic writers. For over thirty years Dario Fo has led the field in political satire. Capitalism, imperialism, the church and government corruption are the main targets in his anarchic farces."

Twenty monologues for women Twenty monologues in this volume which range from the deeply serious to the extravagantly comic and accessible to a wide range of audiences"The pieces are comic, grotesque, on purpose. First of all because we women have been crying for two thousand years. So let's laugh now, even at ourselves" - Franca Rame"Set at the point where reality and ideology rub up against each other, [these] monologues are vivid, concise and entertaining comments on the female condition...comic-but-angry, raw-but-precise" - Independent

"Eifersüchtige Ehefrauen und überraschte Ehebrecher, Banditen und Hochstapler, philosophierende Müllmänner und wiederauferstandene Tote sorgen für Überraschungen. Dario Fo gelingt es, den Leser zum Lachen zu bringen. Er provoziert grotesk-heitere Situationen, die ein bißchen an das Absurde Theater erinnern. Fo erweckt mit DIEBE, DAMEN, MARIONETTEN die Clowns- und Narrenpossen, die Gaukler-Revue und die Komiker-Dialoge aus einem tiefen Schlaf." (Live) "Man muß kein Prophet sein, um den 4 Einaktern dieses Bandes das lebhafteste Interesse aller freien Gruppen, Amateurbühnen etc. vorauszusagen." (Diedrich Diederichsen). Der Dieb, der nicht zu Schaden kam. Der Nackte und der Mann im Frack. Anstreicher sind vergeßlich. Leichen verschickt man, Frauen ziehen sich aus.