Dario Fo, this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is not a Harvard faculty member or a Harvard graduate, but Harvard did play a role in his career.

The Italian playwright and actor known for his anarchic satires exposing injustice and hypocrisy appeared twice at Harvard's American Repertory Theatre (ART), in 1986 and 1987.

Robert Orchard, the Theatre's managing director, spent two years battling red tape to get a visa for Fo. Federal immigration officials, suspicious of the playwright's Communist affiliations, were reluctant to let him into the country.

When he finally arrived, Fo performed in the American premier of what Orchard describes as his signature work, Mistero Buffo (Comic Mystery), a hilarious one-man send-up of political and religious authority.

He returned to the ART the following year, this time to direct and act in another work, Angels Don't Play Pinball. It was the first and only time that Fo has directed a play in the United States.

Orchard describes the six-week rehearsal period as one of the most harmonious and inspired he has ever experienced, an unusual state of affairs in theater and entirely due to Fo's creative influence.

Fo is not only an important writer, Orchard said, but a unique and extremely talented performer as well, specializing in outrageous feats of clowning and mime.

"He has the most flexible face of anyone I have ever seen."

Orchard described Fo's wordless portrayal of a man so hungry he devours himself.

"He took out each of his eyeballs, popped them in his mouth, and savored them. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen on the stage."