Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press
“We have political theater and we have comic theater. But the astonishing thing about Dario Fo is that he manages to combine the two . . . deeply subversive.” –The Guardian (London)
Dario Fo is one of the world’s most important contemporary playwrights, forging subversive comedy, clowning, unusual linguistic experimentation, and brilliant playwriting into a comedy of complete originality. A first-person monologue that bends and mutates language and historical fact, Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas is a brilliant, vividly imagined retelling of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to America. Told by a last-minute conscript assigned to clean the shipboard pig stalls, who goes on to be adopted by a tribe of Indians and help them fight conquistadors, it posits a riotous alternate history in which the dynamics between native and white, male and female, history and comedy are never what they seem.
“The provocative winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize is both playwright and actor, as well as an all-round iconoclast.” –The Washington Post
“Besides his seemingly limitless skills, Fo comes across as a people’s artist from an ancient and vital tradition.” –The Times (London)
“We have political theater and we have comic theater. But the astonishing thing about Dario Fo is that he manages to combine the two . . . deeply subversive.” –The Guardian (London)
“Fo-faced farce wears a broad smile and proceeds at breathtaking speed.” –Financial Times (London)
An Independent Literary Publisher Since 1917
