"The rape" by Franca Rame and pain transformed into art
It was March 9, 1973, the day when Franca Rame was loaded into a van by five far-right militants. These, in turn, rape her and subject her to various tortures, extinguishing the cigarettes on her skin and scratching her with a razor. “I don't try any movement. I am frozen […] I can't do anything, neither speak nor cry ”. So he will tell, after 8 years, through the monologue "The rape", inserted in the show "All houses, bed and church". Some girls can't hold up and, during the staging, faint with dismay. The playwright initially introduces the monologue by declaring that she was inspired by an event that happened to a woman she had read about in a newspaper and, only later, will she reveal that she is that woman.
But why her? Those were the years of lead and Franca Rame belonged to the wrong political party, according to her tormentors. She and Dario Fo, the immense Dario Fo, as well as her husband, collaborated with Soccorso Rosso in prisons, had joined the 1968 movements, had spent their time in favor of the anarchist Pinelli and, in their texts, they had dealt with delicate issues such as fascism and endurance. They knew what they were risking, but they went ahead despite everything, always with extreme courage.
Beyond the damage, the insult: a sentence that never came
“I walk… I walk I don't know for how long. Without realizing it, I find myself in front of the Police Headquarters.
Leaning against the wall of the building opposite, I watch it for a long time. I think about what I would have to face if I walked in now… I hear their questions. I see their faces ... their half smiles ... I think and think about it ... Then I decide ... I go home ... I go home ... I will report them tomorrow. "
And when she denounces them, Franca will suffer a second form of violence, the insidious questions of agents, doctors, lawyers. “Did she enjoy it? Has he reached orgasm? If so, how many times? ”. And, finally, the third form of violence: after 25 years, only the statute of limitations and no conviction.
It happened to her, but it happened and, sadly, it still happens to hundreds, thousands of women. She then decides to give a voice to all of them, she who has the tools to do so. It metabolizes what has happened to it and it does so by transforming pain into art. She could not have done otherwise, who, grown up among puppets and marionettes, made her debut on stage when she was still an infant.
Talk to women as well as men, without victimhood, but with extreme dignity. “Whole house, bed and church”, “Fat is beautiful!”, “The mother”, are just some examples of how Franca has become the spokesperson for the feminist movement in her plays. On stage, he represented the condition of women and did so with irony and provocation, denouncing the mental patterns from which it was now freeing and being freed. Submissive, underestimated, physically and mentally abused, Franca was on the side of all of them, asking for more rights and freedoms.
On the women's side until the last day.
"I also think about my funeral and here, I smile. Women, many women, all those I have helped, who have been close to me, friends and even enemies ... dressed in red who sing Bella Ciao”.
And so it was. Franca Rame died in Milan on May 29, 2013 and, during her funeral, the church was crowded with women who, from above, look like a huge red carpet. It is not so much grief that they want to express, but a sense of gratitude. I'm there to say thanks to Franca, the one to whom each of them owes a piece of their freedom. And we, that thank you, continue to repeat it even after many years and, for this reason, we are here to remember it.
