Dell'Amico is a lecturer in the English Department of California State University, Bakersfield. In this essay, she explores Fo's play as a work of political theater.

The Italian actor and playwright Fo is known as a practitioner of political theater. Political theater, it is important to note, is not theater that lectures an audience on a particular political belief system (or at least it is not supposed to do that). Political theater is theater that attempts to heighten the critical consciousness of its audience. In other words, dramatists with a political bent are interested in furthering audience members' ability to sort through the complexities of modern life so as to make informed decisions about weighty issues; they are not interested only in entertaining their audiences. Thus, despite the entertaining farce of Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist, watching the play is more than just an enjoyable event...