Performance - We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!

Adapted from 1997 Nobel Prize-winner, Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay!

Translated by Ron Jenkins

Directed by Susan Arnold

Dario Fo, one of Italy’s foremost playwrights, is a rarity-a Marxist with a sense of humor. This hilarious farce, a success Off-Broadway and across the U.S., is set in motion when a housewife comes home with groceries she has swiped as part of a spontaneous community action where 300 women did the same. In her effort to keep her secret from her husband, she hides some of the groceries under her best friend’s raincoat. Her husband and his friend, the accomplice’s husband, notice the bulge, of course, but they believe the explanation that the accomplice is pregnant! Hilarity is piled upon hilarity as the characters try to extricate themselves from the mess they have gotten into. Eventually, they all unite to support the spontaneous resistance to eviction in their housing project. This translation was prepared in consultation with Dario Fo and Franca Rhame in 1999 for its premiere at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA.