Dario Fo

Nobel-winning playwright, performer, director, clown extraordinaire, subversive -- via the Guardian. A genius, and a hero of mine. A brilliant satirist who knew that revolution is potentially unleashed with every laugh, that people deserve better, that life must be loved no matter what. Forced out of the mainstream by his left-wing principles, he and wife Franca Rame endured assaults, death threats, blacklisting and more as they entranced the public with work such as "Mistero Boffo," "Can't Pay? Won't Pay!", "Accidental Death of an Anarchist," and "Tale of a Tiger." Such was his infamy that it was very hard to get his work or even work about him in America until he won his Nobel prize, and even then I treasure the few books by and about him I've scrounged from obscure bookstores worldwide.