Birth of The Jongleur

INTRODUCTION TO PERFORMANCE


The piece I’m about to share with you, Birth of The Jongleur was created by Dario Fo in 19—s Italy; but the roots of the piece extend back as far as the 13^th century, and hints of this character appear all over the world. Amazing, yeah? A global character, a gobal concept!

Then Fo pulls all these threads together and creates something he can share with a modern Italian audience. And it was a blockbuster! Sold out again and again, got people really excited, this season’s big thing.—years ago. I’ll show you, and you can decide whether or not it’s outdated.

The French word “Jongleur” means literally juggler or performer, but the true meaning is much greater than that. The jongleur is satirist, social commentator, newsreader and activist rolled into one, packaged into a master’s performance.

The jongleur travels from town to city performing his work for a wide and common audience who don’t normally get much in the way of news or of entertainment. People too busy working hard to support their families and stay afloat to think about vague ideas like politics.

What does he say to these people? Well! All kinds of things you’re not supposed to! Justice, equality, and end to poverty and to boredom…He’s talking civil bloody revolution, as you’ll see in a minute…

So. In this piece the character tells us his story of how his life was transformed, how this “jongleur” character was born.

I will perform it for you as I found it written. It’s tempting to update it a bit, you know, modernise it. Some ideas might seem a bit outdated at first- land ownership, religion, what have these to do with our lives?

Well, I’ll let you guys judge if there’s any relevance, but I’ve left the text alone. What’s coming at you tonight is Fo’s creation, words untouched. My own words couldn’t hold the images so well.

In those days people were ruled by religion. The Pope was a figure of power, God himself was to be feared, and people’s whole lives revolved around doing the right thing and going to heaven.

Very different to our lives today, isn’t it? Many of us aren’t even religious- I’m not.. And we can own land, anyone can, right- as long as we can get rich enough to afford it of course.

Yep, we’re all free now, right?

No religion to teach us conformity, no kings or lords of the land- landlords, so to speak- noone telling us to get to work if we wanna see our family fed, or to shut up if we want to be part of society.

We’re free. Aren’t we?