4 October–1 November 2026 and touring
Teatro Gobetti

by Dario Fo and Franca Rame
directed and performed by Matthias Martelli
assistant director Ornella Matranga
set design Fabio Carpene
costumes Giovanna Fiorentini
lighting design Alberto Ciafardoni
sound Marco Ava
original music Andrea Chenna
linguistic consultants Flavia Chiacchiella, Roberto Imperato
Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale
Teatro Stabile dell’Umbria
Part of the programme of events marking the centenary of Dario Fo’s birth, promoted by Fondazione Fo Rame.

In 2026, three significant anniversaries bring together St Francis of Assisi and Dario Fo: eight hundred years since the death of Italy’s patron saint, one of the best-known and most beloved saints in the world, and one hundred years since the birth and ten years since the death of the Nobel Prize-winning actor and playwright.

Matthias Martelli, Fo’s artistic heir, comes to Teatro Gobetti with a new version of Lu Santo Jullàre Françesco, bringing the force of its revolutionary message and the radical nature of Fo’s writing to the stage after an extensive international tour that has visited all five continents and been applauded by thousands.

But who was Francis of Assisi? And what does it mean to speak of him today? In this work, Fo the jester tells the story of Francis the jester: a rebellious, courageous man, joyfully at odds with the conventions of power and self-interest. Not a sanitised, untouchable image of a saint, but an unsettling, living figure capable of holding up a mirror to every age. The result is a solo performance with many voices: there is only one actor on stage, yet the audience encounters a teeming tableau of bodies, characters and voices.

NOTES BY MATTHIAS MARTELLI

Fo wrote two versions of Lu Santo Jullàre Françesco: the first, in 1999, in Lombard-Venetian, the mother tongue of Mistero Buffo, with a jester’s tale in Neapolitan; the second, in 2014, entirely in a vernacular language blending Umbrian, Tuscan and Marche dialects, with some northern Italian inflections.

My new edition merges the two into a single linguistic spectrum. Since Francis is the patron saint of Italy, the performer dramaturgically combines the two versions, metaphorically traversing the entire peninsula: two jester’s tales in Lombard-Venetian, one in Neapolitan, and one in Umbrian vernacular—not to mention the elements of grammelot that emerge within each, erupting as a pure, physical, universal language.

I have rewritten the introductions, drawing on Fo’s spirit while adapting and updating them, just as he himself did, building on the tradition of medieval jesters. The text is not a monument to be preserved under glass, but a living organism to inhabit and question, in order to recover its deepest truth.

^{Cover photo: Lorenzo Parrazzini}