The next interview in our Stagey Chat series is with the creator and actor of Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo, Julian Spooner. Julian will be performing the piece at the Pleasance Theatre in London, from 23rd September 2025.

Hi Julian, how are you doing today? Thanks so much for chatting to Stage to Page! Would you mind introducing yourself to our readers and telling us how you first got into the theatre industry?

I’m very well, thank you. The sun is shining, going back into rehearsals for a show I love, life is good. Well, I did an undergrad at University of Bristol studying Drama, after I finished that I joined a theatre company with some secondary school alumni headed up by our inspirational drama teacher and took a show to the Fringe. That company was Idle Motion, I left after that to train at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and formed my own company Rhum + Clay and have been co-artistic director of the company ever since (nearly 15 years now!). I kept working with Idle Motion, and as a freelancer for Plexus Polaire & Hoipolloi amongst others, as well as making 11 Rhum + Clay productions, that have toured the UK and the world. We’ve been busy.

Your show, Mistero Buffo, is coming to the Pleasance Theatre in London this month for a limited run. Can you tell us about the story?

Mistero Buffo was created by Dario Fo & France Rame and was inspired by ancient stories that were told by medieval travelling storytellers, going from region to region in Italy with subversive versions of bible stories. The catholic church eventually banned these stories, and the jongleurs (comedic players) that told them were burned at the stake. Dario Fo was a larger-than-life character in Italian culture, a brilliant comedic actor and mime, and also big hero of the left, railing against established power and the extortionate wealth and control of the Catholic church. He reappropriated these stories to his time, breathing new radical life into the words and characters. There are so many stories from the Mistero Buffo canon that for our version we’ve chosen a select few of our favourites and used the narrative arc of Christ’s life as a through line for our show.

The original play by Dario Fo was first performed in the late 1960's. How have you adapted the piece to be more suitable for the modern age?

Dario Fo was a creative that always wanted to speak to the moment he was in, so it was essential that we found a way to make Mistero Buffo speak to our reality. So much has changed since the 1960s/70s, not least of all the cultural position of the working class. Fo used to perform Mistero Buffo in striking car factories and used his work as a rallying cry for the disenfranchised. For us, we found that the new version of that was the gig economy worker; the proletarian has been replaced by the precariat. A precarious worker, not even protected by a union or supported by colleagues (because they technically don’t have any). That’s why in our version of Mistero Buffo, our travelling storyteller is a Deliveroo driver, rushing from their last delivery of the day to perform these stories.

As an actor in the piece and also having such heavy involvement in the creation of the adaptation material, does that provide an extra layer of connection when performing?

Oh, yes. Definitely. When you’re a performer in your own creation you have so much more license to bring yourself into the role. It’s not so much being a vehicle for someone else’s vision or facilitating an external goal, but rather every moment, every character, every line, every gesture is generated from within. Alongside the director,

Nick Pitt, we created a version of Mistero Buffo that feels truly ours, with our own cultural references, from Monty Python to Alan Partridge, to Field of Dreams to Kendrick Lamar, it’s a collage of inspirations and playful shorthand.

My blog is called Stage to Page. But if you could turn any book, from page to stage, what would it be and why?

I’m a massive David Foster Wallace fan and I would love to adapt Infinite Jest one day. It would be one of those 8-hour epics with 4 intervals. I would probably lose my mind making it, but my god it would be worth it. One day, I’ll make that.

And finally, why should people book tickets to see Mistero Buffo?

It’s both very funny and very moving. It’s a show that doesn’t shy away from turmoil and chaos of the world we live in, but rather provide respite through anger, laughter & hope.

You can book tickets to Mistero Buffo, here.

**photo credit: Luke Forsythe**