Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas
Encyclopedia
Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas is a one-man play written by Nobel Prize
winning playwright
, Dario Fo
. It is narrated by Johan Padan, a fugitive from the Inquisition
who accompanies Christopher Columbus
on his fourth voyage to the New World
.
a Spanish theatre troupe was arrested for attempting to stage the same play. Fo, sensing his Seville audience was hostile as well, improvised a story that would eventually serve as the basis of Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas.
after his lover is arrested by the Inquisition
and accused of witchcraft
. After several episodes in which he witnesses violent antisemitism in the form of auto da fe
and financial fraud committed against Jews
who flee such violence, Johan is conscripted as part of Christopher Columbus
's crew, where tends the livestock in the ship's hold.
Upon arriving in the Americas
Johan is entranced by the natives and subsequently horrified by the violence committed against them by his fellow Europeans. When the ship he is on is wrecked, he and his fellow animal keepers, survive by floating ashore on the backs of pigs and after many misunderstandings, joins a Caribbean
tribe, using his skills of basic surgery, fireworks, and horse training to become the holy man of the tribe.
cultures. He teaches his tribe how to tame and ride horses. Finally, in Florida
when they come upon a Spanish colony, Johan realizes that the only way to protect his tribe from being enslaved is to convert them to Christianity
. He teaches them heretical versions of stories from the Bible
and Gospels. When that fails, he uses sabotage, and his expertise with fireworks to drive the Spaniards away.
that drew upon the Lombardian, Venetian
, Catalanian
, Castilian
, Provençal, Portuguese
and Arabic. His wife, the actor Franca Rame
, translated it into modern Italian
. Fo also composed a book of illustrations that he uses to prompt himself when he performs the play on stage.
and grammelot
and onomatopoeia to represent the action. It is considered to belong to the genre of Teatro di narrazione
, which is generally said to have begun with Fo's own Mistero Buffo.
American actor, Thomas Derrah is also noted for performing an English language
version translated by Ron Jenkins.
characters of Zanni
and Harlequin
(characters whom Fo frequently draws upon) and by such historical figures as Cabeza de Vaca, Hans Staten, Gonzalo Guerrico and Michele da Cuneo, early European sailors and explorers of the Americas who came to sympathize with the native peoples and often aided them in resisting Europeans.
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
winning playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, Dario Fo
Dario Fo
Dario Fo is an Italian satirist, playwright, theater director, actor and composer. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the working classes. He currently owns and operates a theatre company with his wife, actress...
. It is narrated by Johan Padan, a fugitive from the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
who accompanies Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
on his fourth voyage to the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
.
Prologue
Fo tells the story of being invited to Seville in 1991 to discuss his earlier play Isabella, Three Tall Ships, and a Con Man and recounted the hostile reception it received in Rome in 1963, and how under the regime of Francisco FrancoFrancisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
a Spanish theatre troupe was arrested for attempting to stage the same play. Fo, sensing his Seville audience was hostile as well, improvised a story that would eventually serve as the basis of Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas.
Part One
Johan Padan flees VeniceVenice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
after his lover is arrested by the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
and accused of witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
. After several episodes in which he witnesses violent antisemitism in the form of auto da fe
Auto Da Fe
Auto Da Fe were an Irish new wave musical group formed in Holland in 1980 by former Steeleye Span singer Gay Woods and Trevor Knight. The band's sound incorporated keyboards and electronics. Woods stated "It was the happiest musical time I ever had so far. I learned so much. I was ridding myself...
and financial fraud committed against Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
who flee such violence, Johan is conscripted as part of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
's crew, where tends the livestock in the ship's hold.
Upon arriving in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
Johan is entranced by the natives and subsequently horrified by the violence committed against them by his fellow Europeans. When the ship he is on is wrecked, he and his fellow animal keepers, survive by floating ashore on the backs of pigs and after many misunderstandings, joins a Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
tribe, using his skills of basic surgery, fireworks, and horse training to become the holy man of the tribe.
Part two
Johan leads the tribe on a journey around the Americas, having comical encounters with other Native AmericanNative Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
cultures. He teaches his tribe how to tame and ride horses. Finally, in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
when they come upon a Spanish colony, Johan realizes that the only way to protect his tribe from being enslaved is to convert them to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. He teaches them heretical versions of stories from the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and Gospels. When that fails, he uses sabotage, and his expertise with fireworks to drive the Spaniards away.
Composition
Fo researched the journals of a number of European explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and wrote the play in a dialectDialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
that drew upon the Lombardian, Venetian
Venetian language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
, Catalanian
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, Castilian
Castilian Spanish
Castilian Spanish is a term related to the Spanish language, but its exact meaning can vary even in that language. In English Castilian Spanish usually refers to the variety of European Spanish spoken in north and central Spain or as the language standard for radio and TV speakers...
, Provençal, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and Arabic. His wife, the actor Franca Rame
Franca Rame
Franca Rame is an Italian theatre actress and playwright. She is also the wife of Nobel Prize winning author Dario Fo and the mother of the writer Jacopo Fo.- Life :...
, translated it into modern Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
. Fo also composed a book of illustrations that he uses to prompt himself when he performs the play on stage.
Performance
When performed by Dario Fo, the play is often improvised, using a book of illustrations as a prompt. He uses mimeMime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
and grammelot
Grammelot
Grammelot is a term for a style of language in satirical theatre, a gibberish with macaronic and onomatopoeic elements, used in association with pantomime and mimicry....
and onomatopoeia to represent the action. It is considered to belong to the genre of Teatro di narrazione
Teatro di narrazione
Teatro di narrazione is a style of theatre, developed in Italy in the later decades of the 20th century, in which there are no actors or action, but only a "narrattore" who tells the story in narrative form.During the show, the narrattore often sits on a chair without moving...
, which is generally said to have begun with Fo's own Mistero Buffo.
American actor, Thomas Derrah is also noted for performing an English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
version translated by Ron Jenkins.
Historical Antecedents
The character of Johan Padan is inspired by both the commedia dell'arteCommedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
characters of Zanni
Zanni
Zanni or Zani is a character type of Commedia dell'arte best known as an astute servant and trickster. The Zanni comes from the countryside. The Zanni is known to be a “dispossessed immigrant worker”. "Immigrant" in Italy at the time of the city-states, did not necessarily mean someone from...
and Harlequin
Harlequin
Harlequin or Arlecchino in Italian, Arlequin in French, and Arlequín in Spanish is the most popularly known of the zanni or comic servant characters from the Italian Commedia dell'arte and its descendant, the Harlequinade.-Origins:...
(characters whom Fo frequently draws upon) and by such historical figures as Cabeza de Vaca, Hans Staten, Gonzalo Guerrico and Michele da Cuneo, early European sailors and explorers of the Americas who came to sympathize with the native peoples and often aided them in resisting Europeans.