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This collection of eight small plays (72pgs) written by Italian marxist Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame is some of the best radical feminist literature that I personally have ever read. These short plays are all independent of each other, but they were meant to be performed consecutively as part of one performance, with a general introduction at the beginning. They all deal with the problems facing women and the sexism which faces them, and yet all of the plays are comedies, like with all of Fo's plays, but this does not take away from the very serious nature of the subjects being portrayed and discussed. I will give a few brief notes about each play below:

A Woman Alone: this play deals with the unhappiness and oppression which many housewives go through due to their husband's despicable, dehumanizing sexism, and as if wasn't enough, they are also defiled and discriminated against by society as a whole. It also looks at the unfortunate fact that many women reach old age, have children, and yet still never experience love or even know first hand what an orgasm is. Instead they are involved with selfish, controlling men with whom love is obviously impossible, and whom see sex as solely an opportunity to satisfy themselves with no regard to the woman's pleasure or to the fact that they are pure and simply just defiling a woman for their own selfish (and most likely short lived) pleasure.

The Freak Mommy: this play looks at how men, both husband and son alike, want to entramp and keep women confined to playing the role of docile, domestic mother, whose only allowable strong passion is for the welfare of her children. And when she goes outside these limits and does something unconventional, or when she decides that the confining life of mother and wife are not what she wants, that she wants a life where she can be independent and be looked at as a woman in her own right rather than just as a wife or mother, all of society will be against her: husband, son, priest, and the state.

Waking Up: this play deals with the incredibly heavy burden that many working class women have to put up with. Not only do these women work full-time in a factory, office, etc, but they are also expected to do everything that a traditional housewife would do: cook, clean, take care of the children, etc. All this while the man, who works no more at his place of work than does the woman, does nothing at home to help, but leaves all that work to his wife. This play is one of the most important plays in my opinion because it argues a strong point which is not often brought up: why is the fact that women working is more acceptable now seen as some kind of advance? In the past women were oppressed at home, and now they get the chance to go out and work and be exploited, and then come home and be oppressed as of old, what progress!

We All Have the Same Story: this play is probably the most complex, and deals with a lot of different subjects. The first is the fact that many so-called progressive, socialist, or marxist men are just as sexist as other men, and are just as interested in using a woman's body for their own pleasure, and are just as disdainful of what that woman wants, just as willing to flee when the woman gets pregnant and just as willing to force a woman to have sex and disdain wearing a condom. It also talks about how doctors exploit pregnant single women with exorbitant costs for abortion, and how abortion itself is attacked by governments and excluded from public health plans, basically forcing normal single women to have their babies even if they don't want to, because they have no money for an expensive abortion. Also, through a story the woman tells her little girl, the idiocy and sexism of traditional "fairy tales" and the general idea that a man could be a saviour or a "prince charming" for any women, is mocked and attacked.

Dialogue for a Single Voice: this play is a clever attack on the way women are treated in relation to sex, with "the man above and I underneath, always caught." In other words, with the woman always being forced to play the passive role, and discouraged from in any way showing her desire and interest in sex.

Medea: this play is related to the classic Euripides' play Medea, whose subject can best be explained by a short quote: "Children are like the heavy wooden yoke of a cow that men have put on our necks, the better to hold us down, to tame us, the better to milk us, the better to mount us."

Monologue of a Whore in a Lunatic Asylum: is about the horrible lives that prostitutes are forced into leading, and the disgusting sexists who take pleasure in taking out their anger on them and defiling them. It also shows the sisterhood between women which will eventually put an end to all these despicable bastards.

It Happens Tomorrow: is based on a real event and a real person, Irmgard Moeller (a Red Army Faction member who was arrested on 9 July 1972). On 18 October 1977, four Red Army Faction members (Irmgard Moeller, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe) "committed suicide" in Stammheim maximum security prison. Moeller was the only one to survive, and she has always said that there was no suicide pact between the prisoners, and that they were murdered, and she was stabbed.

Enjoy comrades:

Liberation:

Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo - Dario Fo, Franca Rame.pdf