Daily Inspiration Quote by Dario Fo

Comedy, for Dario Fo, isn’t a detour around seriousness; it’s the shortest road straight through it. “With comedy I can search for the profound” is a craftsman’s statement disguised as a modest confession: the profound isn’t a treasure you solemnly unearth, it’s something you can only get close to by making people laugh first. Fo is pointing to an old, street-level truth about audiences. Laughter lowers defenses. It creates a temporary community in the room, a shared rhythm, a willingness to follow the performer into uncomfortable territory. Once people are open, you can slip in the questions that would otherwise sound like a lecture or a sermon.

The subtext is political and tactical. Fo came out of Italy’s postwar turbulence, building theatre that drew from commedia dell’arte, clowning, and popular farce while taking aim at institutions that claim moral authority: the state, the church, the police, the respectable press. Comedy becomes a kind of counter-power. The joke isn’t just entertainment; it’s a pressure test for official narratives. Ridicule exposes where authority is brittle, where language is lying, where decorum is doing the work of censorship.

What makes the line work is its quiet reversal of cultural hierarchy. “Profound” usually gets paired with tragedy, prestige, and reverence. Fo flips the prestige economy: the clown is the philosopher, the gag is the scalpel. He’s also defending accessibility as an ethical choice. If the truth matters, it has to travel. Comedy makes it travel farther, faster, and past the gatekeepers who insist profundity must look grave to be real.