Remembering Dario Fo with Robert Brustein

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York City presented Remembering Dario Fo with Robert Brustein livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Monday 24 April at 6:30 p.m. EDT (New York) / 5:30 p.m. CDT (Chicago) / 3:30 p.m. PDT (Los Angeles).

Join us for a day celebrating the legacy of Dario Fo with Robert Brustein, the legendary founder of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T) and Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Awarded the coveted National Medal for the Arts in 2011 by President Obama, Robert Brustein—a veteran of World War II—has been a playwright, critic, teacher, actor, director, and founder of
two major repertory theatre companies, the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard. Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University, he is a former Professor of English at Harvard University (now Senior Research Fellow), and New Republic Theatre Critic for over forty years. He now writes regularly for the Huffington Post, and teaches Dramaturgy students at the Drama School. He was Dean of the Yale School of Drama for thirteen years, where he also founded Yale Theatre magazine and the Yale Cabaret. He served for 20 years as Director of the Loeb Drama Center where he founded the ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard.

Dario Fo (24 March 1926 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter, political campaigner for the Italian left-wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. Fo’s plays, in a hybrid Brechtian tradition, have been translated into 30 languages, and he was considered the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre. Much of Fo’s dramatic work, co-created with his partner Franca Rame (18 July 1929 – 29 May 2013), depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of “illegitimate” forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari (medieval strolling players) and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell’arte.

Joe Grifasi—Recent appearances include Endgame at Long Wharf Theatre, Julie Taymore’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Encores revival of Little Shop of Horrors. Broadway shows include Dinner at Eight, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The 1940’s Radio Hour, and Happy End. Other credits: The Boys Next Door (Drama Desk Award), Says I Says He, Phoenix Theater, Hughie, Goodman Theater, Room Service, Enemies (Williamstown), About Face and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Yale Rep). Directing credits include One Slight Hitch by Lewis Black, A Cup of Coffee by Preston Sturges and As I Remember It at The Kennedy Center. Joe has appeared in over fifty feature films including, Presumed Innocent, The Deer Hunter, Beaches, Naked Gun, Benny & Joon, Matewan, FX, and Natural Born Killers. TV appearances include, Bull, The Good Wife, Law & Order, Rosanne, and LA Law. He is on the faculty of  The New School of Drama.