Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas

Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas, by the 1997 Nobel Prize-winning Italian dramatist Dario Fo, describes the picaresque journey of a John Doe born in the plains of Lombardy (i.e., Padane) in the second half of the fifteenth century, who ends up living his life in the newly discovered American continent. In love with a beautiful witch, he flees Venice in order not to be charged with heresy himself and arrives in Seville, where the Inquisition is keeping the home stakes burning. Another bout of trouble forces Johan to take the next available boat, which lands him much to his surprise in Santo Domingo, and eventually shipwrecked on the coast of Florida. Here he encounters the local “savages” and finds himself closer in spirit to them than to his Spanish torturers. From being the designated breakfast of cannibals to becoming their leader and demi-god, Johan Padan tells a hilarious tale of discovery and survival, exploring the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between wildly different cultures. This actor’s tour-de-force will feature one of the A.R.T.’s most acclaimed and versatile Company members, Thomas Derrah, who has been hailed as “a clown of genius” and “a one-man circus, an animated cartoon of flesh and blood”—the perfect American counterpart to Fo himself.

Johan Padan is performed in English.

Appearing in New York at The Provincetown Playhouse, September 20–October 7.