- Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas
"Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas" is a one-man play written by
Nobel Prize winningplaywright ,Dario Fo . It is narrated by Johan Padan, a fugitive from theInquisition who accompaniesChristopher Columbus on his fourth voyage to theNew World .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 Franco 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
Venice after his lover is arrested by theInquisition and accused ofwitchcraft . After several episodes in which he witnesses violentantisemitism in the form ofauto da fe and financial fraud committed againstJews who flee such violence, Johan is conscripted as part ofChristopher 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 aCaribbean 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 American 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 toChristianity . He teaches them heretical versions of stories from theBible andGospels . 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
dialect that drew upon the Lombardian, Venetian, Catalanian, Castiglian,Provençal , Portuguese andArabic . His wife, the actorFranca 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.Performance
When performed by Dario Fo, the play is often improvised, using a book of illustrations as a prompt. He uses
mime andgrammelot andonomatopoeia 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 anEnglish language version translated byRon Jenkins .Historical Antecedents
The character of Johan Padan is inspired by both the
commedia dell'arte characters ofZanni andHarlequin (characters whom Fo frequently draws upon) and by such historical figures asCabeza de Vaca ,Hans Staten ,Gonzalo Guerrico andMichele 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.
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