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Devon
13 September 1999

This is one of a regular series of Occasional Papers which I send out, on
matters of potential interest to Italianists.

It is posted here by permission of George Ferzoco.

If you wish to receive similar mailings, feel free to contact me. 

Ed Emery.

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Spoleto
10 July 1999

Dario Fo at the Spoleto Festival: Lu Santo Jullare Françesco

St Francis of Assisi, as Saint, Jongleur and Revolutionary

I had it all planned, to come yesterday. But countervailing forces
prevailed. There was a national 24-hour rail strike. In protest against the
planned restructuring of the Italian rail system. Not to mention thunderous
black rain clouds over the whole peninsula: yesterday's open-air
performance was wiped out by bucketing rain and storming winds. 

With his first full-length show since Il Diavolo con le zinne, Fo returns
to the fray with a 2-hour show about the life and times of St Francis of
Assisi, which has its debut at the Spoleto Festival. The latest addition to
his body of revolutionary reappropriations of Italian history.

This performance is based on folk stories, songs and documentary evidence
of the time, which presents the saint not as the benign animal-loving
quietist of official lore, but as an outspoken, occasionally vulgar,
stirrer-up of the people. For instance, when one of his followers is
troubled by the devil, Francis reputedly tells him: "Tell the devil to open
his mouth, and then you go shit in it..."

So Fo claims, anyway... As we know, there are times when he fakes his
historical claims. But this time he has drawn source material from
scholarly books by Chiara Frugoni, whose efforts were apparently less than
appreciated by the Franciscan Order.

Fo deals with the great period of religious wars in Italy and Europe. The
Albigensian Crusade, the war against the Cathars in Provence and elsewhere,
the determined outlawing of all "alternative" religious movements that
could be deemed heretical. And within all this, as Fo suggests, Saint
Francis had his sympathies for the heretics.

He takes as his starting point a sermon that St Francis preached in Bologna
in August 1222. Although none of the texts of the saint's hundreds of
sermons have come down to us, there are eye-witness reports by his
supporters and followers, and these give something of the flavour.

For Fo, St Francis was a fundamentally political character. He took the
side of the poor and oppressed, the workers and the artisans.  And it was
for this reason that, among other things, he did a spell in prison (see
below). "Francis has been continuously censored. He was a political figure
to his roots. And I have shown him in a context of class struggle."

This performance is a monologue. There was to have been a part for Fo's
wife, Franca Rame - to play the part of St Claire, the companion of St
Francis. In part this was abandoned because it would have involved
broaching questions of sexuality, which might have diverted from the
central theme of St Francis as revolutionary. And anyway, in a statement of
some small historical significance, Franca says: Io adesso non ho più
voglia di recitare - "I now no longer have any desire to act". Those times,
it seems, are gone. Now she attends the show in the role of prompter.

For those who ask what Fo has been doing since his illness (1995), and
since the subsequent awarding of the Nobel prize (1997), Lu Santo Jullare
Françesco provides an answer. In part Fo has been active in putting his
name to campaigns and issues of public concern (support for the Kurds,
campaigning against genetic engineering, supporting refugees and
immigrants); in part he has been preparing this reflective performance
based on the themes of war and peace, of love and hatred, of charity and
giving, and of human simplicity in death. 

It is expected that St Francis will tour Italy in the autumn. There is a
rumour that Fo will be going to Cuba for the millennium, to perform for
Fidel Castro, and it is possible that this is the show that he will
perform.

The Outline of Lu Santo Jullare Françesco 

It appears that St Francis actually defined himself at some point as a
giullare or "jongleur" - the figure of the travelling player who took the
experiences of the common people and reflected them back to the people in
an ironical and political form. He was "one who made irony against those in
power, who tormented those in power..." He used popular songs and even
dance in his sermons, which was not at all the done thing for a preacher.
And to have self-defined himself as a giullare was something of a brave
stance, since Frederick II of Swabia had decreed that "jugulares obseni"
(obscene jongleurs) had no civil status, and could be robbed, beaten and
insulted with impunity. 

The further element defining Francis as a giullare was his use of language.
It is known that he liked to speak French, sometimes sang in that language,
and knew the troubador tradition. But Fo surmises that, in order to travel
the length and breadth of Italy preaching - in a country divided by huge
dialect differences - Francis must have developed just the same lingua
franca that was employed by the travelling players taking linguistic
elements from here and there and melding them into one  commonly-understood
whole. Just as Dario Fo does himself, in fact. A neat conceit.

So, the show begins with St Francis's "stupendous provocation... an
incredible spectacle" when he preaches before 5,000 people in the main
square of Bologna, and argues vehemently against the war with Imola.

In a deeply ironical exposition, he holds forth on the pointlessness of
war, the horror of the massacres. And in so doing, he rouses the people of
Bologna against their rulers and this popular pressure brings about the
signing of a peace. His performance includes the transformation of a
harvest song celebrating village life into a song glorifying the butchery
of war. Again, deeply ironical. And this is a useful reminder of how much
Fo incorporates the elements of popular song and dance into his theatre -
an element which is sometimes lost in translation.

There are few directly modern references in this show, but the recently
ended war in the Balkans is clearly the referential backdrop.

The second scene draws on the political ferment that took hold of Italy
after the death of Henry VI, the son of Frederick I Barbarossa. In the
ensuing upheaval the common people attacked the rich and the Emperor's
troops. The powerful upper classes, with their palaces in the towns, tried
to impose their will on the towns. The people reacted by pulling down the
towers of these palaces. This happened in many towns in the region of
Umbria. Fo describes such a scene in Assisi, with four such towers being
pulled down in a single morning, by the local populations equipped with
ropes and human muscle-power. In Fo's version, St Francis is present and
helps in the pulling down of one such tower. 

There follows a wonderfully choreographed section, in which the young
Francis loses his grip, and ends up whirling around up with the bells,
which are ringing all the time.

The lords, duly angered by this assault on their power, join with the city
of Perugia, the sworn enemy of Assisi. There follows a set of skirmishes
with the Perugians, during one of which Francis is caught and imprisoned
for a year, despite his merchant father's best efforts to get him out.
Subsequently the power of the nobility is restored, and in a telling moment
the Assisi rebels are forced to rebuild the towers. Francis is among them,
and it is here that he learns his trade as a stonemason.

Fo tells of Francis's religious crisis. He decides to leave public life,
strips off his fine clothes, and decides to follow the teachings of the
Gospels, on love and charity. His first action is to undertake the repair
of the church of Saint Damiano, and it is here, on his way to the quarry to
get stone, that he meets the Wolf of Gubbio.

There then follows the extraordinary scene in which Fo tells of the taming
of the Wolf, and of the Wolf's subsequent adventures in saving St Francis -
once from a gang of brigands, and once from the dogs that the local Abbot
sets on him. This is a parable on terror and respect, full of comic
invention, and with a wide range of voices (not least the deep, gruff tones
that Fo uses for the Wolf, very memorable).

The second part of the show has to do with St Francis's efforts to get
papal permission to go around as an itinerant preacher, preaching the
Gospels to the people. He visits Cardinal Colonna, advisor to Pope Innocent
III. The Pope refuses to see him, but is eventually persuaded that Francis
is the man who will save the church from its present tattered state.

Eventually the Pope dismisses him, alarmed at his preaching of voluntary
poverty. He tells him to go preach to pigs - and Francis does precisely
that. In all humility he preaches in the shit and stink of a pig sty - and
then goes back to see the Pope. Eventually, rather against his better
judgement, the Pope grants him permission to found an Order.

The constant theme of this section is the contrast between the official
Church, with its pomp and circumstance, and the poverty espoused by Francis
and his followers. However the townspeople and the market folk also reject
Francis's preaching, and it is at this point that he goes to talk to the
animals... in part because the local people, overcome by curiosity, come
and listen to him preaching to the animals, and so take in the message of
his sermons.

The final scene relates the many illnesses suffered by St Francis in his
life of poverty. It tells of a doctor's attempt to cauterise his running
facial sores. And it tells of his eventual death. He is taken up into the
bishop's palace and laid in a fine bed. The monks sing all night, and
Francis persuades his brothers to take him out of the finery of the palace
and lay him on the ground. There, to the strains of a Gloria, the saint
dies in circumstances of utter simplicity, and at this point the show ends.

The Setting: Spoleto

Gentle Umbrian hills, crowned with a thin layering of cloud that reaches
down into the valleys. Armed cities, with their castles and churches,
perched on their hillsides and surrounded by vineyards. A self-standingness
of these communities. This is the territory of St Francis himself, and Fo
portrays the saint as a medieval jongleur, an opponent of the brutality of
war, and a revolutionary who took the side of the common people against
their oppressors.

Spoleto Festival: There is a real air of excitement and expectation among
the audience as we gather for the show. There is a real love for Fo,
evident in the fondness with which people speak of him. They speak with
reverence, a gratitude maybe, of the memory of the first Fo show they ever
saw. A transformative experience in life. Unforgettable. He is quietly
loved for this. And quietly appreciated as a national treasure - he is, in
a sense, the country's political conscience. In among all the dirt and the
corruption, the consumerism, the racism and the nationalism of politicians,
his is a quiet, insistent voice arguing for human decency and a basic human
solidarity. And a large part of the popular esteem derives from the
extrordinary continuity of his work - through 50 years of theatre-making...
the fact that he has stayed the course, and still musters the same human
simplicity and desire for human justice that motivated him at the start.

The setting for tonight's show is truly extraordinary. I would not pretend
to like Spoleto. It has a major police training centre, all armed and
brutal, which appears as an extension of the town's earlier armed history.
Looming massively over the town is the ugly four-square bulk of "La Rocca",
an over-sized fortress, built in 1360 to consolidate the power of the
papacy.

Access to the castle is up winding cobbled streets, through stone gateways,
up a long curving ramp to the main gate. The building has just been
restored and opened to the public. Once inside, you find yourself in a
courtyeard of breathtaking beauty, framed within massively high walls, with
an upper gallery running round, the cream stone set off and lined with red
brick. In the alcoves of the upper gallery are painted frescoes, with noble
coats of arms writ large. A performance space has been created which is
close to perfect for Fo's style of performance. It invokes instantly the
power, wealth and arrogant confidence of the nobility that oppressed the
local populations. The creamy rich texture of the stone is like a
newly-stretched canvas - neutral - and to it Fo applies the
freshly-imagined colour of character and situation.

But what is most extraordinary about the venue is that until fifteen years
ago this building was a prison (confirmation of Spoleto's repressive
vocation). It housed - in conditions of degradation and exaggerated
oppressiveness according to archive photographs - prisoners who were
serving life sentences. The only way that some of them left was when they
were carried out dead. And their presence in their thousands somehow haunt
us tonight, as if the newly restored beauties cannot erase the horrors of
the past. Somehow the ghosts of those prisoners are still here, in their
cells, as Fo unfolds his story of bloody war, civil repression, universal
love and human liberation. And, in fact, that is what motivates the coda
section of his show. A simple and heartfelt call for the elimination of
degradation in the treatment of prisoners worldwide. Abandon the urge to
punish, degrade and humiliate our fellow human beings then they have done
wrong. Believe that greater, and more creative, human values can prevail.

The physical setting for "Saint Francis" is completed by a massive painted
canvas, perhaps 25-feet square, which is the backdrop against which Fo
performs. It is, he says, "a kind of arazzo" - the canvas story-board
characteristic of the travelling story-tellers of old,  depicting scenes
from the stories that we are about to hear. In this instance, scenes from
the life of Saint Francis - the pulling-down of the nobles' towers... his
illness... his embracing a pig... his life with his fellow brethren, etc. A
painting by Fo himself, since our man is a graphic artist of long standing.
His line-drawings in the programme notes, depicting individual scenes in
more detail, have an extraordinary lithe energy about them.

The audience, it has to be said, is notably well-heeled. They have the air
of being the prosperous local administrative, cultural and professional
bourgeoisie. Confident, self-satisfied, see-and-be-seen. The kind of people
who can afford to eat in Spoleto's expensive and chic little eateries. Not
surprising. When I rang to book a ticket I was quoted a price of 115,000
lire, which is £40 a head. There is something disconcerting about this -
and also about the fact that the festival is sponsored by the likes of
Philip Morris Tobacco, Mercedes Benz and Mobil Oil - not that I would want
to take away from the beauty of the event. The show's preview, six days
ago, was ticketed entirely for young people under the age of 25, at a
single ticket price of 30,000 lire (£10).

The voluntary poverty embraced by Saint Francis, the belief in earning your
place in this world by honest labour, the rejection of worldly possessions
- these are themes that run through the show. I suppose that in a way they
are part of Fo's self-image of himself. Not that he is a poor man, far from
it. But as the years go by the essential simplicity and dedication of the
production team that produces the Fo oeuvre becomes apparent. They are an
extraordinarily hard-working, consistent small band of people, who are
durable in their commitment to each other (through all the ups and downs in
the life of a travelling theatre company). First and foremost, Franca Rame
- who does not perform in the show, but sits at the prompt-table on-stage
to remind the maestro when he forgets a name or two. Then, Fo's
long-standing sound-and-light technician, Lino Avolio. In administration,
Marisa Pizza and Marina de Juli. And, as director, Mario Pirovano who (in
one of the lovelier stories of theatre history) now performs the Fo oeuvre
all over the world in his own right. 

Something akin to the small, dedicated band of brothers of Saint Francis,
who travelled the length and breadth of Italy narrating the gospels to
ordinary folk, bearing a moral message throughout the land, and mounting
ironic challenges to the rich and powerful. Both Fo and Saint Francis share
a singled vocation, as giullari (the single word which, when you know the
history as purveyed by Fo, says it all).

Fo as Saint Francis, Saint Francis as Fo, this show is a multi-layered
exercise in self-reflexivity when you view it from a certain angle.  

Ends


[A note for your diaries: A conference-plus-performance-event, a
>>Celebration of the Life and Times of Dario Fo and Franca Rame<<, to be
held at the University of Cambridge, 28-30 April 2000. Details will be
posted on this discussion list shortly.]



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