Women Undressed and Bodies to be Despatched

(I cadeveri si spediscono, le donne si spogliano)

By Dario Fo

Translated by Ed Emery

Directed by Charles E. Polly

at the Eureka
215 Jackson Street, San Francisco

October 2-28, 2001

Women Undressed ... opened in Milan in 1958 in a collection of four one-act farces entitled Thieves, Dummies and Naked Women, and, in 1959, was Fo’s first play to be televised on Italian TV. “All real theatre is theatre of situation” says 1997 Nobel prize winner Fo. Fo’s controversial political satires, censured by the Vatican and barred from the United States, frequently target capitalism, imperialism and governmental corruption. Mistaken identities abound in this black comedy, one of Fo’s more absurdist works. Although Women Undressed ..., a ‘thriller’ farce, was written during what has come to be known as Fo’s ‘pre-political period’, it still contains considerable social commentary ­ poking fun at the bureaucracy within the Italian postal service and the difficulty of divorce (which didn’t become legal in Italy until 1974) in a highly creative and slightly macabre way.