On the Italian Stage: Lu Santo Giullare Dario Fo 3

Encounter 3 – The Holy Jester: Dario Fo
Few modern performers transformed storytelling as radically as Dario Fo. Fo drew inspiration from centuries of popular performance and oral history told in his town by people working around the Po river. This session explores Fo’s masters and inspirational figures, the architecture of his storytelling, his extraordinary relationship with the audience, and above all, his use of gramelot: a language that exists somewhere between sound, gesture, dialect, invented words, and pure theatrical expression. Participants will discover how Fo could make an audience understand a story even when the “words” themselves did not officially exist.

What does it mean to tell a story? And why, thousands of years later, are we still captivated by the same ancient art?
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Dario Fo’s birth, this four-part series takes participants on a fascinating journey through the history of storytelling—from the traveling storytellers of ancient Greece and the Sicilian Cunto, to medieval jesters, Shakespearean fools, the oral traditions of Italian villages, and finally the extraordinary gramelot made famous by Fo. Through stories, demonstrations, historical anecdotes, and hands-on exercises, participants will discover how the storyteller uses voice, rhythm, breath, language, gesture, imagination, and the relationship with the audience to transform words into theater.

In ENGLISH