STAGING THE STATE, PERFORMING POLITICS: A CURIOUS CASE OF DARIO FO AND FRANCA RAME

Abstract

This article investigates the theatre of Dario Fo and Franca Rame through the conceptual framework of performative ideology, arguing that their dramaturgy does not merely represent political realities but exposes the theatrical mechanisms through which power legitimises itself in modern society. Drawing upon the traditions of medieval Giullari, Ruzzante, Commedia dell’arte, and twentieth-century experimental performance, the study demonstrates how Fo and Rame transformed popular theatre into a critical instrument for interrogating state authority, ecclesiastical power, capitalist hegemony, media manipulation, and patriarchal domination. Through close readings of major works including Mistero Buffo, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, All Home, Bed, and Church, The Open Couple, The Rape, The Pope and the Witch, Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas, and L’Anomalo Bicefalo, the article reveals how institutional discourse operates as a repertoire of repeated performances that naturalize social hierarchies and ideological consent. The study further situates Fo and Rame within broader traditions of performance theory by engaging Stanislavskian realism, Meyerholdian biomechanics, Grotowskian actor training, and Lecoqian physical pedagogy. Their theatrical practice emerges as a dynamic synthesis of improvisation and discipline, bodily expressivity and political critique, collective authorship and popular communication. Particular attention is devoted to grammelot, clowning, direct audience address, grotesque embodiment, music, and anti-naturalist staging as strategies that dismantle official narratives and expose the performative foundations of authority. The article also reassesses Franca Rame’s indispensable role as playwright, performer, feminist theorist, and collaborative creator whose interventions expanded the political horizon of popular theatre by foregrounding gendered forms of ideological regulation. Ultimately, the essay argues that Fo and Rame’s theatre constitutes a radical counter-public sphere in which laughter becomes a mode of historical inquiry, performance becomes a practice of ideological demystification, and theatrical representation functions as a powerful medium for reimagining democratic agency and cultural resistance.