Variations on a Theme: Respecting Dario Fo

Variations on a Theme: Respecting Daria Po JOSEPH FARRELL A translator is conventionally expected to content himself with a condition of self-effacing invisibility. which surpasses anything even Victorian parents once imposed on their offspring. The good translator should be neither seen nor heard. He should fade into the background, and should expect that if his presence is noted, it is as a prelude to sonie censure or reproach. A translator will receive attention only when responsible for some gaffe. transgression or solecism which will require discussion and correction at a later date, once the guests have withdrawn. The way Daria Fo's translators have come to be viewed confirms this rule. Their sin is to have made themselves noticed. Fo, as is endlessly repeated, is the most frequently performed living playwright in the world today, which is another way of saying that he has more translators than any other playwright in the world today. The nature ofthe performed versions ofFo's work has aroused a high level of controversy, and it appears that there has been greater interest in the process of transposing a Fo text from its original Italian into other languages than has been accorded the same process with any other writer. I The nature of the translated text employed for production, principally the perceived confusion ofroles between translator and adapter, has puzzled and enraged critics. Fo himself has contributed to the general air of disapproval. As he told an interviewer , in reply to a question about the productions he had seen: I have seen few good works. Some were respectable, others appalling, either on account of the actors, the director or the text itself, which had been supposedly corrected but often cheapened.2 Fo has himself protested vociferously about specific productions, and specific published versions of his work. Although neither Dario Fo nor Franca Rame speak English, they subject translations identified as suspect to rigid, if Modem Drama, 41 (1998) 19 20 JOSEPH FARRELL idiosyncratic, scrutiny by having the debated translation re-translated into Italian . This process creates difficulties of its own. as the resemblance between an original text and a fe-translation is comparable to that between a bullet in the barrel of a gun and a bullet which has ricocheted off a steel plate. A further level of difficulty is added by the nature of Fa's scripts. When they deal with contemporary political topics, as was the case with Accidental Death of an Anarchist, they are subject to regular rewrites in the light of changing circumstances and new developments. And in all cases, his plays are subject to reshaping in the light of audience response or of reconsideration by Fa or Rame. On at least one occasion, a translator w~s censured because his translation was based on a fifth draft, but once re-translated, the comparison was made to the fourth draft. Various cuts and additions which were put down to the translator's intrusive, slapdash or high-handed disregard for the original were actually the result of rewrites undertaken by the author. Obscenity or vulgarity are especially delicate areas. Personal relations scarcely ever feature in Fo's work. Both Fa and Rame are scrupulous about the language they employ on stage, and in none of Fo's works is there any material which could, in the linguistic register employed, offend the most demanding Calvinist or Cannelite conscience. Even the recent Zen and the Art of Screwing3 confonns to [his rule. It was written not by Daria Fa but by his son Jacopo. and Franca Rame performed it because she viewed it as a work which would further the sexual education of the young. On the other hand, in his own play An Ordinary Day , Fa features the case of a woman who receives phone calls from other women who believe they are calling some outre analyst . One of the callers is a prostitute who reports that, in an excess of professional pruderie. she has bitten off the testicles and related attachment of one of her clients. For the attachment in question, Fa employed the term coso, an imprecise. colloquial term which translates as "thingummy." [n my translation I set aside such...