Category: We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!

Check out a real world parallel to We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! 

By Katie Stewart
Assistant Director, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!

How often is rebellion associated with laughter? In the case of Nobel-prize winning playwright Dario Fo, the answer is always! Intiman’s production of We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! this summer features the work of a playwright who actively challenges everything that is around us (and our tendency to accept it at face value) and wraps it within a joke. He said in an interview, “I’m interested in discovering the basic contradictions in a situation through the use of paradox, absurdity, and inversion. This enables me to transform one reality into another reality, not as a trick, but so people will understand that reality is not flat…”

The reality that Fo was facing when this play was published was bleak. Living in Turin, Italy, during the economic crisis of the1970s, Fo was seeing workers oppressed, families left homeless, police brutality, and the idle government standing by. The country had reached a boiling point, and Fo was among the many citizens who had had enough. So he took that anger and did something amazing: He wrote a farce.

Jane Nichols has made it clear to all of us in the rehearsal room that this is a play that starts with being angry, angry that the injustices that Fo was commenting on – unemployment, evictions, oppression, starvation and lower-class struggle – are still so relevant almost half a century later. Throughout the play the characters themselves are frustrated and angry as they try to survive. It is that need to endure that can lead to laughter. We have a choice: to boil with rage and take to the streets or to spin our perspective around, look at it from another point of view, and burst out laughing.

We’ve all used this form of survival before: when we’ve looked at a reality so dismal and, like Fo, reached through to find a different reality where there was paradox and even comedy. For my family, that moment came earlier this spring. My mother, who recently began her chemo treatment for breast cancer, called me on the phone to tell me that she had been to the wig shop. And they didn’t have any wigs in her size. Because her head is too big. I felt myself shaking, and realized it was from laughter. We laughed together because we actively chose not to cry.

Why would anybody want to see misfortune made fun of? Why come to this show at all? You don’t perform a farce to tell the legacy of a particular brave person, or to relate to the audience an important history. A farce is about the storytelling experience itself, the isolated hour or two when the audience and actors are intimately close, sharing energy with each other. We all know how precious that is. That moment when you look up on stage and burst out laughing, or nod your head, or feel complete empathy with the characters in front of you. It’s brief, but invaluable.

This summer We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! really is about the experience. Fast, impulsive and real, this play makes the choice to smile and dance during a revolution. It will make you laugh, it will make you think, and it will, as Fo intended, make your vision of reality more complex. A true ensemble show, with a narrative that depicts human perseverance, this story has no hero. No one character will demonstrate incredible strength or honor. Instead, they all have a whole lot of one thing: humanity. And only together can they survive.

Q&A with director JANE NICHOLS

Jane Nichols has taught clowning everywhere. Seriously, everywhere: Harvard, Juilliard, Yale, Brown, the University of Washington, you name it. Jane has helped spread the love of laughter and good comedy for over 20 years, and we’re so excited to have her at Intiman this summer. Check out what she has to say about the art of clowning, directing We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!, and living in Seattle.

What do you love most about WE WON’T PAY! WE WON’T PAY!? What drew you to this show?

Dario Fo wrote it. I am a huge fan of Dario Fo. He’s a genius comic performer, as well as a relentless, fearless critic of social injustice and hypocrisy. He’s perceptive enough to be outraged by it all, yet he has the wisdom and insight to laugh at it. This show in particular is perfect for these times of economic inequality, and the exploitation and disregard of the working class.

Can you describe your favorite scene (no plot spoilers!)?

I have a feeling the lazzi’s are going to end up being my favorite scenes. But we haven’t finished staging any of those yet so I cant say for sure. At this point I will say that my favorite scene is with the State Trooper. Because the actor playing him affects a Castillian accent that is so idiotic it makes me laugh every time he opens his mouth. My favorite scene right now is the scene with “grandpa”. It’s towards the end of the play, things are unraveling, all the characters are onstage, and grandpa floats into the room to drop the final ‘bomb’ with no more urgency than a sleepy cow smelling a rose. It is the rhythm of the grandfather juxtaposed with the alarm and tension of the other characters that makes for delicious chaos and comedy.

If you could pick just one reason that people should come see this show, what would it be?

To laugh at ‘what fools we mortals be’ in a shared space with other fools laughing at the same thing. It’s always my hope that if people come together to acknowledge their foolishness they will get over themselves and embrace their common humanity. And anyway, laughing feels good.

You have a great background in clowning – teaching it — how does that translate into your work as director for this comedy?

Comedy is all in the timing, as they say. Plus it’s also in the tone. Because of my years of teaching, I’ve been marinating in what’s funny and what makes people laugh for just about half my life. I’ve also been marinating in the genius of the actor’s imagination and intuition. In the rehearsal room I count on the actors to give me their intuitive responses to the text and situations, then I shape them. What you see onstage, hopefully, is not only comically timed out, but organic and credible as well. The trick is to create an atmosphere in the rehearsal room that encourages the same kind of freedom of invention as the atmosphere in a classroom. We start each rehearsal with Tag. Seriously. As well as other ridiculous games that help unleash spontaneity and the courage to play. Acting takes courage. Comedy REALLY takes courage.

You recently moved to Seattle – how come and what do you like most so far?

I moved to be near my two daughters and my beautiful grandchildren. End stop. I love cherish and adore the flowers! The lush green everything. And the mountains on the days they’re out. Plus I love my new house, especially the patio with its azaleas and little blue fountain. And I am amazed, just plain amazed, and deeply grateful at how welcomed I have been by the theatre community here. The clowns at Ear to the Ground, the Ensemble at WET, and EVERYbody at the Intiman. It’s been something quite close to heaven. Like Seattle on a cloudless day.