BOOK PRESENTATION “Il giullare ribelle. Vita apocrifa di Dario Fo”

One hundred years after his birth, and ten years after his death, Dario Fo, the last Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, remains in the collective imagination a genius, an irrepressible artist, a free and often lucid figurehead in intellectual, social, and political debate. For those who live in the theater, however, he represents above all a master who—along with Franca Rame, his lifelong companion—carved an unparalleled creative path, generously giving of himself to the audience and to the many actors and authors who came after him.

Matthias Martelli was nine years old when he first saw an old recording of “Mistero Buffo” on TV: it was a revelation, and it was to Fo and that show that Martelli would return years later, when his lively stage career took off.

Driven by the same impetus, with the devotion of a student and the authority of an artist, Matthias Martelli writes a biography of Dario Fo in which his eclectic life—from his childhood among the storytellers of Lake Maggiore to his resounding international recognition—is brought to life in a vivid narrative, capturing the full artistic, civic, and human power of the “rebel jester.” It is a cultured, joyful, popular, and subversive theatrical tradition that is rekindled in these pages, allowing a voice to resonate that, today more than ever, we need to hear again.

Come discover the book “Il giullare ribelle. Vita apocrifa di Dario Fo” (Baldini and Castoldi, 2026) in the presence of the author at the Italian Cultural Institute.

• Tuesday 22 September 2026
• 6:00 PM
• 4/125 York Street Sydney CBD
• Free admission
• In Italian
• Bookings on our Eventbrite profile HERE

Matthias Martelli

Matthias Martelli (born in Urbino in 1986) is an actor, playwright, director, and jester. His first play, The Merchant of Monologues, ran for over 300 performances and won several national awards. With Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo, directed by Eugenio Allegri, he performed on the most important Italian and international stages.
He has written and performed numerous plays for Italy’s leading theatres, including Raffaello, the Son of the Wind, Dante Between the Flames and the Stars, FRED! (directed by Arturo Brachetti), and Eretici, il fuoco degli spiriti liberi.
Winner of the Frontino-Montefeltro National Culture Award, he is the author of acting lectures such as The Universal Language of Dario Fo, presented at Chapman University in California. In May 2026, he will debut Lu Santo Jullare Francesco by Dario Fo, co-produced by the Teatro Stabile di Torino and the Teatro Stabile dell’Umbria. You can find him touring, alive and well, with over a hundred performances a year, in theaters and squares around the world.

Dario Fo

Dario Fo (Sangiano, March 24, 1926 – Milan, October 13, 2016) was an Italian playwright, actor, director, writer, author, singer-songwriter, lyricist, illustrator, painter, set designer, activist, and comedian.

He authored plays that employ the comic stylistic features of the Italian commedia dell’arte and are successfully performed around the world. As an actor, director, writer, set and costume designer, and impresario of his own company, Fo was a well-rounded man of the theater. Renowned for his political and social satire and his left-wing political commitment, he and his wife Franca Rame were among the leaders of the Militant Red Aid movement. In 1997, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.