It's Alive! Voices of Resistance

Dario Fo: Accidental Death of an Anarchist

March 21, 2017 | 05:30 pm

Free
March 21, 2017 | 05:30 pm

Senior Lecturer Anna Kohler’s semi-staged play-reading series -It’s Alive!- fosters collaboration between the MIT performance community and both emerging and lesser-known maverick playwrights from around the world in several presentations per year.  This Voices of Resistance reading will feature Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo.
 

Reading Participants:
Adam Strandberg
Noelle Colant
Jennifer Glerum
Peter Duerst
Caroline Walsh
Herng Yi Cheng
Jeremy Wright
 

About the play
Internationally popular, Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist [Morte accidentale di un anarchico] is a farce based on a 1969 incident in which an anarchist railway worker (Pinelli), arrested in connection with a terrorist (Piazza Fontana) bombing in Milan, fell (or was thrown) to his death from a fourth-story window at police headquarters during the course of an interrogation. His death was officially declared a suicide. The police report held blatant contradictions. Subsequent investigation revealed the probable innocence of the worker. Fo set out to demolish the official story through the play’s production at his collective, La Commune.
 

About the Playwright
Dario Fo (1926-2016), a popular and controversial Italian playwright, director and performer, won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He wrote over 80 plays, many of those co-authored with his wife, the actress Franca Rame.