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It gives me great pleasure to introduce Dario Fo (1926-), an Italian radical leftist playwright, and the best playwright I have ever read by far. Although you may be wary of political theater, or as Fo put it "Political theater has become a kind of byword for boring theater, conceited theater, pedantic theater, mechanical theater, a non-enjoyable theater," Dario Fo's plays are one of a kind. What do I mean by that? I mean that Dario Fo, while always focusing on social and political issues in his plays, always combines this with irresistible humor. I have never seen even a mediocre imitation of what Fo does in his plays, combining politics and humor more successfully than could be thought possible. That being said, I have read many of Fo's plays already, many several times, and will be posting them all eventually, so if you enjoy this play, don't worry there is more to come!

This play, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, is based on a true story. Giuseppe Pinelli, or 'the anarchist' was a railway worker and anarchist who was framed up by the police for a bombing (by right-wing fascists) of a Milan bank in 1969. After several days in police custody, and during an interrogation, Pinelli fell from the fourth floor of the Milan police station in which he was being interrogated. We are more than familiar with this type of falling where the police say the person "jumped" when they actually threw the person out. This is also eerily similar to what happened a few months ago in Damanhour when fucking state security threw Fares Barakat from his 4th floor balcony. So as you can see this is still a very relevant play, due to the unfortunate persistence of police brutality and coverups.

Liberation:

The Accidental Death of an Anarchist - Dario Fo.pdf