Italian Playwright Dario Fo to Run for Mayor of Milan

Robert Simonson, Playbill

Hey, it worked for Václav Havel. Dario Fo, the Italian
playwright who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997,
has said he wants to run for the office of mayor in Milan,
his home city, next year.

"We must hold primary elections to choose the center-left
candidate for mayor of Milan," Fo said, according to the
BBC. He added that he wanted to help people "get our city
back" from conservative Italian prime minister Silvio
Berlusconi and current Milan mayor Gabriele Albertini. "In
Milan, we can fight a good battle to remove the right.
Winning here would have an enormous significance. After
Berlusconi, a center-left victory would be a breath of fresh
air."

Fo is a well-known advocate of left-wing causes, and most of
his plays have espoused his political views. His most recent
play was the anti-Berlusconi political satire "The Two-Headed
Anomaly."

A playwright being elected to high political office is not
without precedent in Europe. Václav Havel put down his pen
to take up office as president of the then-new Czech
Republic (part of the former Czechoslovakia) in 1993. He
served until 2003.