Anarchist pays visit to Pitt, along with a free lunch

Pitt students and professors filled the William Pitt Union’s Lower Lounge for a noon luncheon… Pitt students and professors filled the William Pitt Union’s Lower Lounge for a noon luncheon and panel discussion of the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s production of Italian satirist Dario Fo’s controversial play, “Accidental Death of An Anarchist.”

Yesterday, Pitt Arts, the Pittsburgh Public Theater and Pitt’s French and Italian Department sponsored The Genius of Dario Fo: “Accidental Death of An Anarchist” — a free, public event.

“This play is a bit of a stretch for the Public [Theater],” said Pitt professor emeritus Ben Hicks to professor Dennis Looney before the panel began.

“The City Theatre has a reputation for doing more controversial plays,” Looney said, and because the City Theatre is a smaller venue, the stakes are not as high as when the Public Theater does a controversial play like Fo’s, he added.

“It is a risky play,” Looney continued. “It is a farce about politics.”

The panel included two Pitt professors from the French and Italian Department, Giuseppina Mecchia and Francesca Savoia, as well as Kyle Brenton, Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Resident Dramaturg, and actor Robert Dorfman, who plays “The Maniac,” the leading role in the play.

Mecchia began the panel discussion with a historical background of the play.

“The play is a farce about the strange happenings of an anarchist [who] flies out of a police office [window],” Mecchia said.

The actual event happened in 1969 in Milan, Italy, during the height of the Cold War, he explained. The Italian Socialist Party and centrist Christian Democrats, along with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, developed a strategy to counter the influence of the Italian Communist Party, which had ties with the Soviet Union. The Anarchists, a politically active minority that supported communism, received the blame for an attempted military coup.

On Dec. 12, 1969, a bomb exploded in a Milan bank, killing 16 people and wounding 82 others. This event, the massacre of Piazza Fontana, begins Fo’s play.

Milan police officers arrested Giuseppe “Pino” Pinelli, an anarchist, and accused him of setting off the bomb. Pinelli was held in police custody for more than two days longer than the law allowed, and just before midnight on Dec. 15, Pinelli fell five stories to his death. Fo’s play revolves around the mystery of Pinelli’s death.

The massacre remains unpunished, Mecchia added.

Savoia then explained to the audience how Fo’s circumstances in Italy shaped the format of the play. Fo sought alternative venues for his politically radical works because they were frequently censored and he wanted to reach a more popular audience. Fo wanted to produce a theater for “counter-information” against the Italian government.

“Anarchist” opened in 1970 in a working class neighborhood, Savoia said.

For “Anarchist,” Fo had to create a script that had to stay open to daily changes, like the outcome of the trials and daily press reports. Fo devised a plot that revolves around a central character, “The Maniac,” who writes and rewrites the script during the performance.

Brenton then spoke of the challenges in adapting Fo’s folk play to something to which a Pittsburgh audience could relate. “Anarchist” is a framework for a performance, Brenton said.

“There is no authoritative text to go from,” he explained. “We tried to excavate the original text.”

Pittsburgh Public Theater set the play in Italy during the same time period as the actual event, tried to find the base of the text, and then peppered in current themes.

Dorfman finished the panel with an energetic cry for all the students to come to the theater and say, “We won’t pay!”

“I urge you all to become anarchists,” Dorfman said.

Qian Zhang, an incoming Pitt graduate student in Communications, attended the event to get the background of the play before she went to see it last night.

“I don’t want to have suspense,” Zhang said with a laugh.

After the panel discussion, Zhang said she wanted to know more about Dario Fo, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997.

Annabelle Clippinger, director of Pitt Arts, said that events like this “help deepen students’ perspective of the theater.”

Pitt Arts has also done panel luncheons for performances at the City Theatre and Kuntu Repertory Theatre.

“Theater is living literature,” Clippinger said.

“Accidental Death of An Anarchist,” performed by the Pittsburgh Public Theater, is currently playing at the O’Reilly Theater through April 4. Pitt Arts is offering $12 Cheap Seat tickets for students. For more information about Cheap Seat tickets, call (412) 624-2298 or visit 931 William Pitt Union.