born March 24, 1926, Leggiuno-Sangiano, Italy
Italian playwright.
He and his wife, Franca Rame, founded a theatre company that developed a leftist theatre of politics and later established an acting troupe with funding from the Italian Communist Party. In 1970 they set up a touring collective to perform in factories and other public sites. Fo's popular one-man show Mistero Buffo (1973) was censured by the Vatican. He wrote more than 70 plays, including the satire Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1974) and The Pope and the Witch (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997.