Accidental Death of an Anarchist Essay

Dario Fo’s original play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist has been adapted and transformed an innumerable number of times, to greater or lesser success. Most often, adaptations that involve a modernisation or complete transformation of the play can be seen as less successful as they tend to alter the original so much that the original message and intention of the play is lost. However, often when adapting the play to a modern context, a complete transformation is required to satisfy the requirements of a vastly different audience. Whilst it is difficult for a non-Italian speaker to fully comprehend the message, style and purpose of Fo’s original writing of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, through literal translations and other’s opinions, we can begin to decipher Fo’s original intention in writing such a politically active text. Written in 1970 in response to the â€Å"accidental† death of Pino Pinelli, an anarchic railway worker, in the play Fo writes about real life events in a political framework. His central message undoubtedly revolves around his desire to incite a will to act in his audience. See more: Homelessness as a social problem Essay As asserted by Joseph Farrel in his introduction to Nye’s adaptation of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, â€Å"it was no part of Fo’s scheme to be unduly subtle in his approach or intentions† and, as Fo himself has said, his aim was to provoke â€Å"laughter with anger†. The central message of Fo’s play is indisputably one of political origins, which highlights the utter corruption of the society in which it is based. However, Fo achieves this aim through the mechanism of farce, for, as according to Joseph Farrel, â€Å"Farce seemed to him [Dario Fo] the most effective means of provoking thought†. It is for just this reason that Fo disguised such a serious, â€Å"hard-hitting† message in the guise of farce, for â€Å"farce was a device which prevented ‘catharsis’†, â€Å"one of the worst dangers†. Fo believes that laughter â€Å"serve[s] a purpose, to grab the attention of the audience†. Nevertheless, Fo does not merely want to â€Å"make them [his audience] laugh, but he also wants them to feel indignant about the cover-ups and miscarriages of justice perpetrated by the Italian police force†. In so doing, the central message of the play challenges the authorities while demonstrating that comedy can be at the heart of truth. The style of Fo’s original play rightly fits under the â€Å"noble and modern† genre of farce, as described by Dario Fo himself. Fo models his characters after the medieval giullare and harlequin from Commedia dell’arte. When the play was originally performed, it was modified on a day-by-day basis, as according to the events uncovered during the trial of Pinelli. Thus, the play also included improvisation and was subject to change according to the audience’s reactions. Furthermore, the play usually contained a â€Å"third act† that involved a debate with the audience in which Fo would discuss the affair and encourage audience participation. Fo’s play generally involved an absence of the â€Å"fourth wall† and actors would often communicate with the audience. In Fo’s original, the madman is the character that, according to Farrell, â€Å"destroys all conventions† and â€Å"does not merely cavort and make fun of the baubles the king wears around his neck, but also of his right to wear a crown at all†. The madman â€Å"exists in a dimension of his own†, however is also the â€Å"personification of reason and public morality†. His primary purpose is to expose the utter corruption and, to a certain extent insanity, of the police force. It is ironic that this task is awarded to a madman. While Fo depicts the policemen as â€Å"smiling and largely benign† buffoons, he ensures that their â€Å"sinister† nature and malicious tendencies are not lost. Fo’s original gives the journalist â€Å"a completely straight part†, for, as according to Fo, â€Å"there comes a point when laughter is no longer necessary†. When translating the play, numerous issues arise that, in some cases, prevent the true meaning of it from being conveyed. First and foremost among these issues is the simple fact that, as stated by Brigid Maher in her article entitled The Comic Voice in Translation: Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, â€Å"the translation of literature is a cultural act as well as a linguistic one†, which leads to the question, â€Å"how can a play be made to work in the target culture while still retaining some of those qualities that make it a part of the source culture? †. It is undeniable that different ultures understand and endorse different things, resulting in the conclusion that, an adaptation is the best means to ensure the play remains relevant when the culture of the target audience is changing. Many adapters struggle in â€Å"finding a means of communicating to a non-Italian audience the information on political events Fo was able to take for granted with his own audiences†, and thus many have produced â€Å"nothing more than a kind of surreal farce†. Adapters also encounter difficulties when attempting to â€Å"accommodate performance traditions as well as accuracy† and â€Å"ensur[ing] that dialogue is speakable as well as faithful to the original†. The key issue in translating the play lies in remaining faithful to the original: a play of massive political impact that lies well and truly in the genre of farce. This aim of the play, to â€Å"provoke laughter with anger† is difficult to replicate, resulting in many translators of the text â€Å"emphasis[ing] the comedy of the play at the expense of the politics†. Simon Nye’s adaptation of the play, created for Methuen Drama in 2003, seemingly remains true to the original text, although the translation appears to entail a loss of â€Å"anarchism† in the changing of the context and political references. This results in the play losing seriousness, to the extent that its potency is diminished. In Michael Billington’s review of Nye’s adaptation of the play, he states that he â€Å"miss[es] the moral anger that should underlie the madcap zaniness† and that the play is â€Å"torn between reverence for the original and the desire to do a radical re-write†. In essence, this translation of the play is exactly that; while it appears to remain true to the original, changing the political context to relate more to post 9/11 fears of terrorism results in the actual concept of anarchism being lost, taking the tragedy of the death of an innocent man along with it. Gavin Richards’ version of the play, written for Belt and Braces Roadshow Company in 1979, while different to Simon Nye’s, still falls short of being a true translation of the original. In the words of Tony Mitchell, Richards’ adaptation â€Å"distorted the original text, cutting it extensively and adding speeches and stage business which often went completely against the grain of Fo’s play†. The satire of the play is diminished and it appears to descend into the realms of â€Å"slapstick† comedy to obtain â€Å"easy† laughs. Brigid Maher elieves that Richards’ version of the play â€Å"presents not so much an interpretation of the text, as a significant rewriting which in large part misrepresents the â€Å"intention of the text†Ã¢â‚¬ . She believes that Richards’ alterations â€Å"significantly alter the ideology of the text† and that it becomes a play that is â€Å"simplistically funny and has less of an edge of social and political criticism†. Richards appears to miss the point of Fo’s play, that is to â€Å"elicit†¦ not only laughter, but also indignation and impetus to action, and never†¦ atharsis†, especially in his conclusion of the play, in which a cathartic feel is undoubtedly interwoven. Both Nye and Richards elected to alter the name of the madman, â€Å"Il Matto† in Italian, to maniac, and in so doing lost some of the potential meaningfulness of the madman’s speeches. Fo originally depicted the madman as â€Å"cunning, scheming, disrespectful towards authority, quick-witted†¦ incisive in his judgements and scornful of official cant and mendacity†, as described by Farrell. He is supposed to be â€Å"the personification of reason and guardian of public morality†. While in Nye’s translation the maniac maintains this â€Å"reason† and â€Å"public morality† by asserting that the anarchist was â€Å"completely innocent†; according to Jane O’Grady in her review of Nye’s play, â€Å"he [the maniac] doesn’t really enjoy himself enough to transport the audience into hilarity†, with â€Å"laughter† being one of the primary aims of the original play. Nevertheless, the madman maintains his didactic demeanour and endlessly offers attacks on authorities, such as when he tells the inspector to â€Å"stop dumping on people†. In Richards’ play the maniac’s speeches and other important dialogues are short and concise, to the extent that major sections appear to be missing. This is evident in the play when the maniac’s speeches in Nye’s translation tend to extend for pages and involve complex discussions about the politics of the time, including anarchism, to the extent that social class segregation is discussed, in the lines â€Å"There’s an old saying: ‘The squire sets his dogs on the peasants. The peasants complain to the king, so the squire kills the dogs and gets off the hook†. Richards’ play completely omits these references, resulting in a play that appears to value slap-stick comedy and â€Å"easy-laughs† above arousing indignation and â€Å"impetus to action† against the utter corruption of the authorities. Furthermore, the language employed by Richards is both vulgar and exceptionally colloquial when compared to Nye’s adaptation. This is evident in many lines, such as when the maniac is describing the positives associated with being a judge. In Richard’s translation, the maniac says, â€Å"Take your lathe operator- touch of the shakes, couple of minor accidents, out to grass. Coal miner, bit of silicosis and he’s fucked at fifty†, whereas in Nye’s translation, the same speech reads, â€Å"Worker on a production line’s past it at fifty- trouble keeping up, making the odd slip-up, out you go! Your miner’s got silicosis by the time he’s forty-five- off he trots, sacked, before he’s entitled to a pension†. Nye’s maniac appears to have greater intelligence than that of Richards’, which is evident simply because he brings up the thought of a â€Å"pension† at all; a concept that Richards entirely omits, along with many other such references. Richard’s version also omits the section in which the maniac transforms himself into a Bishop, condensing the variety of references in the play and thus the play becomes less politicised. According to Tony Mitchell, Richards often â€Å"reduce[s] the characters to caricatures† and uses a â€Å"highly non-naturalistic, agit-prop form of staging†. Richards â€Å"reduce[s] the police characters to almost racist Italian stooges† and seems to miss the point that in the original, â€Å"despite being bumbling, incompetent buffoons, they are always capable of maintaining an aggressive, threatening front†. Richards ensures that the policemen are reduced to these â€Å"bumbling† fools when he makes them â€Å"crawl around† and bestows them lines such as â€Å"oggy, oggy, oggy, oi, oi, oi! †. Nye also has a tendency to portray the policemen as â€Å"smiling and largely benign† buffoons, and in so doing their underlying â€Å"sinister† nature is lost. However, Nye’s major downfall lies in is his characterisation of the journalist, a character that, in the original has â€Å"a completely straight part† for when â€Å"laughter is no longer necessary†. Nye depicts the journalist as a playful, flirty woman who often participates in the comedy. O’Grady describes this as â€Å"ill-thought out† and thus some of the underlying seriousness of the play is lost. Nye strays from the original when he does not attempt to break the â€Å"fourth wall† and no audience participation is encouraged, whereas Richards remains true to the original in frequently breaking the â€Å"fourth wall†. This is seen in his play when Bertozzo addresses the audience by saying, â€Å"I ought to warn you that the author of this sick little play, Dario Fo, has the traditional, irrational hatred of the police common to all narrow-minded left-wingers and so I shall, no doubt, be the unwilling butt of endless anti-authoritarian jibes†. Nevertheless, it is unclear if this is actually an attempt to remain true to Fo or simply a comedic mechanism to obtain â€Å"easy† laughs, the second of the two more likely due to the nature of the statement and that it is in fact insulting Fo. Richards’ play commences with an introduction that describes the background behind the situation, perhaps as an attempt to replicate the background knowledge that audience members would have been in possession of when Fo’s play was originally performed. However it is Nye that undoubtedly has written a play as close to Fo as any modern adaptation could be. This is evident throughout the play, however is most prominent in his choice of ending. Nye concludes with the death of the maniac, and thus that of another innocent man, and a real judge entering to â€Å"reopen the enquiry into the death of the anarchist†. Contrarily, in Richard’s version of the play, he concludes with two alternative endings, one in which the policemen are killed and the other in which the journalist dies. The maniac concludes the play with the line â€Å"whichever way it goes, you see, you’ve got to decide†, and thus a certain cathartic feel is produced. Dario Fo’s original intention in writing Accidental Death of an Anarchist was undoubtedly to provoke not only â€Å"laughter†, but also â€Å"anger†; an â€Å"impetus to action† against the utter corruption and lies surrounding the Italian police force of the late 1960s. His intention, as he has said himself on numerous occasions, was never to provoke â€Å"catharsis†, and it is for this reason that neither Simon Nye’s nor Gavin Richard’s adaptations of the play are particularly successful. Fo’s discontent with these particular adaptations stemmed from their having transformed the entire message of his play. He believed that the moral anger and potency was missing, the laughs were paramount and that the â€Å"painful immediacy† was lost. As Pissani rightly asserted in Richard’s own adaptation of the play, it consists mainly of â€Å"unheard of distortion to the author’s meaning†. Nevertheless, this loss of potency in the plays can, to a certain extent, be attributed to the problems associated with translations. It is difficult for a non-Italian audience that has not been exposed to the political events of Italy in the 1960s to comprehend Fo’s complex referencing. This ensures that alterations must be made by adapters to account for this, and in so doing, much of the original message of the play is lost. Furthermore, in changing the culture of the target audience, expectations and even humour is changed and thus no adaptation of Fo’s original could ever be a true representation of it. It is not just these alterations in references that cause adaptations of the play to be unsuccessful in the society of today. It is also the simple fact that many audiences are not as politically active or affected as Fo’s original audience, and thus a certain complacency is adopted in our culture. This complacency results in the play being not as successful despite updated references, simply because the political events in the play do not resonate as profoundly with a modern audience. Accidental Death of an Anarchist Essay Q) Critically analyze the Figure of Madman in Dario Fo’s play The Accidental Death of an anarchist. A) Dario Fo’s play The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) lies in the category of revolutionary theatre that challenges the fascist regime of Italy. The play is a farce based on events involving a real person, Giuseppe Pinelli, who fell – or was thrown – from the fourth floor window of a Milan police station in 1969. He was accused of bombing a bank. The accusation is widely seen as part of the Italian Far Right’s strategy of tension. Just like Fo’s other play, this play is also funny and subversive and shows a strong preference for the culture and traditions of the ordinary people and a commitment to the left wing politics. The play moves quickly through a series of farcical situations and exposes the hypocrisy and anti- people character of the bourgeois society and the so called sacred institutions- the police, the judiciary, the religion and the media. The play was originally written and performed in Italian in 1970 and first English translation was done in 1979. Central to the play is the character of The Madman, who is the prime protagonist of the play. Through the story of the madman in a police station Dario Fo has a created a â€Å"classic example of exquisitely political theatre† with a comedy that begins from being realistic, (the stage setting is of a realistic, ordinary police station) moves towards the frankly implausible (the madman, the inspector, the superintendent and the constable singing the song of anarchists in the police station), reaches to the level of grotesque (the constant punching and kicking of Bertozzo by the police officials, and the falling eye) until it ends with a hilarious and ludicrous climax. â€Å"He (the madman) invents dialogue based on a paradoxical or on real situation and goes on from there by virtue of some kind of natural, geometric logic, inventing conflicts that find their solutions in one gag after another in correspondence with a parallel political theme, a political theme which is clear and didactic. You are moved and you laugh but above all you are made to think, realize and develop your understanding of everyday events that had escaped your attention.† – Franca Rame on The Character of Madman in Accidental Death of an anarchist The madman is not just a character in the play, but he acts as a literary device in the play. He provides most of the humor content of the play. The madman is whimsical and he constantly contradicts other characters as well as himself. His series of logical/illogical arguments becomes impossible to tackle and it frustrates the Police Department. Even though being termed as psychologically unfit, the madman appears to be the most intelligent character in the play. He ridicules the police officials for missing out on the basic concepts of English grammar and the use of the most important â€Å"COMMA† that changes the meaning of a sentence. He dictates the terms of law and judiciary to police officials. He is extremely sarcastic. He ridicules the superintendent for assuming the railway man planted the bomb in railway station without any substantiate evidence and sarcastically rebukes the â€Å"kindergarten logic†. The people in power appear to be inhuman and brute in their actions, and the â€Å"sacred† governmental place, the police station appears to be a madhouse or a slaughterhouse. The madman, even though he is mad appears to be the sanest character in the play. In fact, he appears to be directing the play according to his wishes. Suffering from a disease of enacting people, he sees the world as a stage and other people as his fellow characters. He warns Bertozzo that soon he is about to be punched by Pisani and warns him to duck. Bertozzo ignores the directorial warning of the madman. Later he tells the superintendent to stop playing around and â€Å"keep to the script†. The actions of the play move around as the madman says and everyone does what he asks them to. Bertozzo, who defies the madman’s instructions, keeps on getting punched and thrown out. Hence, Fo, in his play, takes the power out from the hands of the police, the judiciary, and the media and gives it to the representative of the lower section of society, the madman. By pretending to be, in turn to be various figures of authority – psychiatrist, professor, magistrate, bishop, forensic expert – the Maniac forces officials to re-create the events with the purpose of showing the inconsistencies in the official reports of Pinelli’s â€Å"leap† and to confess their responsibility in the anarchist’s death. The madman manages to create mayhem within the policeman, representatives of law and order and figures of authority are made to appear ridiculous and a target of laughter. He exposes how people in power are all in collusion to save their own. Now I am about to show some of the theatre/TV productions of the play and give brief comments on how the character of madman operates in them. Firstly, take a look at the 1983 British TV movie that was telecasted on Channel 4. In this production, the original Italian setting is mixed with contemporary references to Thatcher’s Britain. 1) In the beginning itself, various impersonations of the madman are shown pointing towards the crime committed by him. 2) The madman constantly points towards the audience that is standing upwards, and the crew, and chats with them. And he talks to the director about the censorship laws on television in Britain, when the inspector says The â€Å"F† word. (5 minutes 30 seconds). 3) In the play, not only the madman enacts different roles, but the same constable is used on the 2nd floor and the fifth floor and also as a liftman. The madman here is concerned with anti – materialist sentiment as well. The madman remarks about the fact low budget of the show saying, â€Å"Couldn’t they get a different actor to play you? Who’s directing this thing, Ian MacGregor?† (17 minutes) and the Maniac, â€Å"This is commercial television in crisis!† Similarly, in The IIT production of the play, which is performed in India, in Hindi, the references are converted according to Indian settings and sentiments. 1) The University of Padua is converted into University of Patiala. The madman teaches the Hindi vowels to the constable and the policeman. (4:30) (A aa e ee) 2) The police inspector in the 6th minute of the play says to the madman that he’s madder than the madman. As I said above the madman appears to be the sanest of characters in the play. My fair Heathen Productions in their September 2007 production actually used a woman for the role of the madman. Hence the madman is enacting as a madman from the beginning and in fact is a mad woman. This does not bring a significant change to the play, except probably the so called marginalized figure of a madman, becomes a more marginalized figure as in this production it’s a woman, who comes to a male dominated domain and creates havoc in the lives of the men from powerful sections of the society. Hence, different theatre companies have used different types of madman to heighten the message of the play.