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  • Essay / The Accidental Death of an Anarchist as a game of social and political commentary

    Dario Fo, author of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 and the Swedish Academy, awarding him the price, noted that "the works are open to creative additions, to dislocations, continually encouraging the actors to improvise." Fo always wanted his pieces to be improvised and adapted according to the environment and performance conditions. This is why he encouraged adaptations rather than translations of his scripts into other languages, provided that this was adapted to the socio-economic/cultural context of the performance, without the political orientation being undermined or distorted. From the beginning, he sought to develop a kind of theater that does not simply reflect documents but actively participates in the collective life and struggles of its audience and becomes a form of collaborative political action. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The reason for Fo's immense success and his ability to elicit the kind of audience response as he did in Italy is not only the artistic vitality of his theater but also the political immediacy of the subjects he addresses in his plays like Accidental Death of an Anarchist, which essentially becomes a text focused on performance rather than storyline . Javed Mallick has identified a major problem in analyzing the play as a class text, namely that the play only works in performance if it is linked to an immediate political context and a situation familiar to the audience and to the interpreters. According to him, Fo initially wrote the play as a political intervention in a specific situation and therefore we should analyze it with this troubled period of fascist and anarchist state in mind. Fo had based his play primarily on the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and the subsequent death of the arrested anarchist, Pinelli, who fell from a fourth-story window into a courtyard below. The room in which he was being interrogated was only 13 by 11 feet and there were five experienced officers in the room when Pinelli "flew" out of the window with a "cat-like leap." The police's first explanation was that Pinelli had committed suicide, insisting that the jump was proof of his guilt. However, many other theories have arisen due to the lack of physical evidence on the body as depicted in the piece, including blatant murder by police or an "accidental" death due to negligence and technical extreme bullying. deployed by the police. Fo, in the guise of the madman disguised as an investigating judge, underlines the grotesquely grotesque efforts made by the Italian police to exonerate themselves from any responsibility for Pinelli's death and to justify not following any right-wing leads in their investigation into the affair. Bombs in Piazza Fontana. It later turned out that these bombs were the work of two fascists. At this point, it becomes imperative to talk about “tension strategy”. The idea behind the strategy of tension, whether it be the neofascist groups who planted a series of bombs during those years or their accomplices and protectors within the secret services and the security apparatus State, was to arrest the growth of the strength of the working class. . The random planting of bombs was intended to create serious tensions within society. It was important that these forces give the impression that they are anarchists, communists, trade unionists, etc. who were behind the bombs. We hoped that the situationgeneral that would be created would be such that it would not be clear who was specifically responsible for it. So, to end the chaos, the left had to be suppressed across the board. As Tom Behan says, in the climate of fear and revulsion created by the bombings, it would be relatively easier for the state to justify the suspension of normal democratic procedures and the subjugation of the left. Apart from this, the ultimate goal was the creation of a political system bordering on fascism, which is why the involvement of fascist groups and elements within the secret services with fascist sympathies became crucial. The play's audience was aware of the seriousness of the "strategy of tension" and it is a direct reflection of Fo's success that he was able to present the play as a wild farce and a popular comedy by distancing the tragic implications in order to “anticipate public empathy”. This strategy is embodied in the numerous changes of disguise that the madman undertakes. In British adaptations of this play, the police characters were transformed into mere caricatures, which was extremely disturbing to Fo. It therefore becomes essential to emphasize that these are not caricatures or stereotypes, making inaccurate not only British production but also several other foreign productions. There is no doubt that Fo makes him, as Tony Mitchell says, "the butt of comedy and farce." This, however, is inherent in the statements and behavior of devious and dangerous types that show the abuses of power that the police have mercilessly exercised in their extreme repression of the Italian left. On the other hand, Fo neither defends nor shows any sympathy for the anarchists, whom he describes as an insignificant group of extremists whose organization was so chaotic that they could not have been the perpetrators of anything as complex as the Fontana attacks, which the inspector also admitted “military precision” was required. The indictment of police behavior in the play takes on a more serious note in Felletti's character, who seems implacable in the face of the embarrassing facts of the Pinelli scandal. However, Tony Mitchell claims that his harsh interrogation was offset by the madman's change of disguise, replete with artificial limbs, from investigating judge to "Captain Marcantonio Piccini of forensic research". However, in an interesting insight, Jolynn Wing observes that "Fo plays Piccini as an absurd conglomeration of fake body parts so blatant that he is transposed into a virtual puppet...As the scene builds, he becomes more and more obvious that the Maniac's grotesquely corrupt body and the body politic are theatrical reflections of each other. The play's farcical situational antics come to a head when the Maniac is stripped of his "forensic disguise" and poses as the Bishop, who collaborates with the police. This disguise allowed Fo to satirize the Church and discuss the consequences of this affair which, as the bishop says, is used as “fertilizer for social democracy”. As said before, Fo rendered pieces focused on performance. Therefore, by leaving the ending hanging, the play had no catharsis or outlet for the audience, which Fo hoped would stimulate a desire for political change. Discussions following the play tended to focus on the need for a revolutionary strategy and a "counter-power" developed on Marxist-Leninist lines against the Christian Democratic state. As Fo later wrote in the preface to a sequel to the play, "this monstrous tragic farce which bears the name of 'state massacre,', 2000.