Dario Fo, author of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 and the Swedish Academy noted while awarding him the prize that Fo “plays are open to creative additions and dislocations, continually encouraging the actors to improvise”. Fo always wanted his plays to be improvised and adapted in harmony with the environment and conditions of the performance. This is why which he encouraged adaptations rather than translations of his scripts into other languages ​​as long as they fit the socio-economic/cultural context of the performance without the political thrust being weakened or distorted. From the beginning he sought to develop a type of theater that does not limits itself to reflecting documents but actively participates in the collective life and struggles of its audience and becomes a form of collaborative political action. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The reason for Fo's immense success and his ability to evoke the kind of audience response as he did in Italy is not only the artistic vitality of his theater but also the political immediacy of the issues he addresses in his plays like Accidental Death of an Anarchist, which essentially becomes a text focused on performance rather than script. Javed Mallick has identified one of the main problems in analyzing the play as a school text, namely that the play only works in performance if it is connected to an immediate political context and a situation familiar to the audience and the performers. According to him, Fo originally wrote the work as a political intervention in a specific situation and we should, therefore, analyze it with that troubled fascist/anarchist state period in mind. Fo had essentially based his work on the Piazza Fontana attack in 1969 and the subsequent death of the arrested anarchist Pinelli, who fell from a fourth-floor window into the courtyard below. The room in which he was interrogated measured just 13 by 11 feet, and there were five senior officers in the room when Pinelli "flew" out the window in a "cat leap." The police's first explanation was that Pinelli had committed suicide, insisting that the jump was proof of his guilt. However, many other theories have emerged due to the lack of physical evidence on the body, as highlighted in the play, including the act of blatant murder by the police or "accidental" death due to negligence and extreme techniques of intimidation . be deployed by the police. Fo, in the role of the madman disguised as an investigating judge, underlines the grotesquely farcical extremes to which the Italian police went to exonerate themselves from any responsibility for Pinelli's death and to justify not having followed any right-wing lead in investigating the case. Bombs in Piazza Fontana. It was later discovered that the bombs were the work of two fascists. At this point it becomes imperative to talk about "tension strategy". The idea behind the strategy of tension, whether it was the neo-fascist groups who planted a whole series of bombs in those years or their accomplices and protectors within the secret services and the state machine, was to stop the growth of the strength of the working class. . The random placement of bombs was done to create strong tensions within society. It was important that these forces created the impression that anarchists, communists, trade unionists and so on were behind the bombs. It was hoped that the overall situation that would be created would be unclear who specifically was responsible, so to stop thechaos, the left had to be repressed in general. As Tom Behan states, in the climate of fear and revulsion created by the bombings it would be relatively easier for the state to justify the suspension of normal democratic procedures and the subjugation of the left. Beyond this, the ultimate goal was the creation of a political system similar to fascism, which is why the involvement of fascist groups and elements within the secret services with fascist sympathies became crucial. The play's audiences were aware of the severity of the 'strategy of tension' and it is a direct reflection of Fo's successes that he was able to present the play as a madcap farce and popular comedy while distancing the tragic implications to 'prevent the audience's empathy.' This strategy is embodied in the numerous changes of disguise that the madman undertakes. In the British adaptations of this play the police characters were transformed into simple caricatures, which was extremely disturbing to Fo point out that they are not intended as caricatures or stereotypes, making not only British productions but many other foreign productions inaccurate. That is , however, inherent in the statements and behaviors of devious and dangerous types that show the abuses of power that the police have mercilessly exercised in their extreme destruction of the Italian left. On the other hand, Fo neither supports nor shows any sympathy for the anarchists, whom he describes as an insignificant group of extremists whose organization was so chaotic that they could not have been the perpetrators of something as complex as the Fontana attacks, which the inspector also admitted that "military precision" was needed. The accusation of police behavior in the show takes on a more serious note in the character of Felletti, who seems to be relentless about the embarrassing facts of the Pinelli scandal. However, Tony Mitchell claims that his harsh line of questioning was balanced by the madman's change of disguise, replete with artificial limbs, from investigating judge to "Captain Marcantonio Piccini of forensic research". In an interesting insight, however, Jolynn Wing observes that 'Fo embodies Piccini as an absurd conglomerate of body parts so patently fake that he is transposed into a virtual marionette... As the scene develops, it becomes increasingly clear that the Maniac's grotesquely corrupt body and the body politic are theatrical reflections of each other. The play's slapstick situational games reach a climax when the Maniac is stripped of his "forensic disguise" and proceeds to impersonate the Bishop, who is cooperating with the police. This disguise allowed Fo to satirize the Church and discuss the consequences of the affair which, as the Bishop states, is used as a 'fertilizer of social democracy'. As mentioned before, Fo represented performance-oriented plays. Therefore, by leaving the ending unresolved, the show had no catharsis or outlet for the audience, which Fo hoped would stimulate the desire for political change. Discussions following the work tended to address the need for a revolutionary strategy and a "counterpower" developed along Marxist-Leninist lines against the Christian Democratic state. As Fo later wrote in the preface to the work, "this monstrous and tragic farce" which goes by the name of "state massacre", presented courtesy of the democratic organs of the state, had the planned result of a vast "isolation campaign" of workers' struggles and the annihilation of their most militant activists". AND, 2000.