SOURCE: "The Iconicity of Absence: Dario Fo and the Radical Invisible," in Theatre Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3, October, 1993, pp. 303-15.

[In the following essay, Wing argues that, especially in his one-man skits, Fo causes the visible to become invisible, requiring the audience's participation to fill the gaps.]

In demonstration of the mysterious power of absence as a staging technique, Italian playwright/performer Dario Fo recounts an intriguing tale of a performance at a mental institution for "untreatable cases" in Turin, Italy. Fo was in the midst of a skit involving an archangel and a drunk, in which he, himself, played both characters, a task which compelled him continuously to speak to the empty spot where he had just "placed" his antagonist. At one point, as he was impersonating the drunk who was trying to get a word in edgewise, a patient began berating the (absent) archangel for stifling the...