Word: fo
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...common thread linking Fo’s diverse creations, however, is a deeply serious core. Fo is not the type to elicit laughter that doesn’t also hurt on some level. The subjects he chooses to explore are those that even the most earnest and high-minded dramatists would be wary to bring on stage; the violence of the extreme right, worker uprisings, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
...such boldness, Fo has won both hatred and acclaim. The esteem with which he is held in academic circles is often equaled by the animosity shown by many of his audiences—not just the middle-class theatergoers to whom Fo often refers with contempt, but also the working-class and politically ostracized elements of society toward which Fo’s work appears most sympathetic...
...Unfazed, Fo has made it a personal crusade to find new spaces and new audiences for theater; his purpose, though, is not to expand its role as entertainment but to create from it a tool for social change. Like all such crusades, the setbacks have frequently rivaled the successes. But Fo persists, even when it seems he might have an excuse to rest...
...best excuse came in the form of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature. Often the cap of a literary career, Fo turned his award into yet another opportunity to advance social causes through comedy. If nothing else, his Nobel lecture must be deemed one of the most unusual addresses in the history of the award...
Delivering an improvised speech entitled, “Against Jesters Who Defame and Insult,” Fo used a series of drawings to criticize the Swedish Academy for choosing him and then delivered a discourse on institutionalized forms of violence ranging from the execution of medieval court jesters to recent assassinations of intellectuals in Turkey...