부산대학교 도서관

Italian playwright Dario Fo, who got the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, views theatre as a dialectical space in constant conflict with the historical space and believes that theatrical space should engage in constant dialogue with a critical audience leading to continuous rewriting and sharpening of political message. Fo invents the dissident potential and carnivalesque aspects of Italian Commedia dell' arte for specific political purposes and redefines the image of the guillare, the popular, unofficial mouth piece of the peasant population, who is essentially pre-commedia. The present paper aims to demonstrate how Dario Fo employs the tradition of amateur theatre groups and Commedia dell'arte to restore the dignity of the downtrodden masses with his own interpretation of history. He believes that there is a need to reinterpret history from the prism of writers and performers who are more frequently regarded as purveyors of mere entertainment, strolling players, clowns, local story tellers, variety performers, farceurs and scriptwriters for various popular carnivals and fêtes. He shows distrust in the quasi-divine image of a historian and alleges that historian is also a performer who cooks several historical details and serve them to the readers as facts. He redefines the concept of tradition in his theatre by applying the historicity of past facts to the present leading to a cultural revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]