R. G. Davis papers relating to Dario Fo

R. G. Davis studied dance, acting, and mime in New York City from 1956 to 1958, and in 1959 received a Fulbright scholarship to study with Étienne Decroux at l’Ecole du Mime in Paris. He served as an Assistant Director of the Actors Workshop in San Francisco from 1959 to 1962, and founded the San Francisco Mime Troupe, 1964 -1970, directing and performing in numerous Commedia dell’Arte adaptations of Moliere, Goldoni, Machiavelli, Beolco (Ruzzante), and Bruno in Bay Area parks and across the United States. He also founded Epic West, a center for the study of Bertolt Brecht, in Berkeley, California, 1975-1979.

In 1979 Davis obtained the rights to Dario Fo’s plays The Accidental Death of an Anarchist and We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! and presented the North American premier of The Accidental Death of an Anarchist in Toronto, Canada. Multiple productions of We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! included a performance of the first act by students at New York University (1980) and productions off-Broadway in New York (1980), at the Tamahnous Theatre in Vancouver (1980), and with a black cast at the Los Angeles Actors Theatre (1981); Davis’s North American version of the play was published by Samuel French in 1984. Davis also staged a production of Female Parts, a play by Fo and his wife Franca Rame, featuring Jane Dornacker in San Francisco in 1983. In 1985 Fo’s legal representative sent Davis a letter abrogating the rights contract.

Dario Fo (1926-2016) was an Italian dramatist, theater producer and director, actor, singer, composer, artist, and political activist. He received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature.