Socialist Action /November 2002
Two Comic Artists Speak for the Oppressed
By GAETANA CALDWELL-SMITH
Dario Fo, clown, prolific writer, and playwright, has been denounced
by the Vatican. He has been to court in Italy for "contributing to
criminal acts" with his satirical jabs at the Pope's stance on abortion.
In the 1970s and 80s, he was barred from the United States under the
McCarren Act. Invited here to perform in 1986, by the head of the American
Repertory Theater, he sarcastically thanked Reagan for all the publicity
for keeping him out of the country. Then, in 1997, he won the Nobel prize
for literature at the age of 71.
Fo's plays are rooted in an old comic tradition, and are written to open
audiences' eyes to societal injustices. One of his plays, "We Won't
Pay, We Can't Pay," was recently performed by the Shotgun Players in
Berkeley, Calif. It dealt with the bleak lives of Italian factory workers
and their need to confront constantly rising costs of food and goods during
the 1970s-a period of political radicalization and frequent strike actions
in Italy.
The play centers on an instance in which working-class wives rebelled
in a supermarket. With filled carts, they stormed through the checkout stands,
shouting, "We won't pay! We can't pay!" A clownish policemen,
investigating the supermarket theft, had had it with the repressive actions
of those in power against alleged perpetrators, so he became anti-establishment.
Performed today, the play, in part, comes off as dated, with some sexist
themes. In the early 1970s, in Italy, the feminist movement was just getting
started, as compared to the United States, where the Equal Rights Amendment
had passed in 1972 (only to peter out in 1982 when the states failed to
ratify the amendment).
In one scene, the Pope is slammed for his stance on birth control and
abortion when there's no money, no jobs, and no food to feed children without
bringing more into the world. One character stated that terrorism is being
held hostage by a minimum wage job. He went on to sermonize about the homeless.
Looking out the window of a one room apartment, the workers and their
wives watched as poor people started a riot against the cops. Though fear
had turned to rage, the people still hoped for justice.
Dario Fo's plays remain popular because he incorporates elements of the
clown in his staging and characters, a device common during medieval times,
when clowns were the voices of oppressed people. Carey Perloff of the American
Conservatory Theatre once said that Dario Fo wakes up an audience through
comedy, rather than bludgeoning them over the head with his point of view.
n
Astrid Hadad, a native of Chetumal, Mexico, was in San Francisco
last month to present her funny, politically charged cabaret performance.
Culled from a decade of best-hits shows, she performed in Spanish and "Spanglish,"
using Mary Magdalene, sinner par excellence, as the leading thread.
Hadad keeps the flame of passion burning, saving it from extinction where
she fears it is bound. Some have likened her work to a Frida Kahlo painting
come to life, as she includes some of the richness of images engendered
by Mexican history and culture: Heroes and saints, indigenous iconography
and art; lusciously crafted, colorful native foliage, as well as elements
of historic Mexican films.
One reviewer has called her a "walking museum of popular cultures;"
another, a one-person "Beach Blanket Babylon" (a stage show in
San Francisco in which the actors wear huge, elaborate headdresses). Her
show throbs with tongue-in-cheek dark comedy and satire. Tim Weiner of The
New York Times wrote that Hadad could be one of the most provocative stage
acts since the Weimar Republic was in bloom.
In a take on the Virgin of Guadalupe, Hadad, costumed in a wedding-cake
dress replete with skulls and a huge bustle of large spears from the maguey
plant spreading behind her like a peacock tail, and huge serpents on each
hip, related how the virgin was once the goddess Coatlicue. She said that
Coatlicue's "Third World immaculate conception" happened while
she was sweeping, indicating that the poor always have to work.
Astrid Hadad retakes the spirit of everything Mexican. Like Dario Fo,
through her comic sense, she sets the forces of evil against those of goodness
and leads the audience to acknowledge its shadow side as well as its enlightened
glories.
Socialist Action /November 2002 |