Franca Rame was part of a travelling family. The family and ancestors were traditionally playful and worked since the 17th century on the art media. It's a popular form of theater, and so it's very rich in dialects. Simple frames are interpreted, mixing puppets and carnivals suits. It's based on humor and improvisation, but acrobatics were also used.

The appearance of film endangered the use of puppets in the early 20th century, and Ram’s family led to the representation of people to adapt to new times. Franca's father, Domenico Rame, was in charge of selling the show, collecting the stories of the place where they traveled, or prolonging the show if the audience were at ease. Her mother, Emilia Baldini, was the manager of the company and also learned to sew. He repaired clothes and prepared scenography. If it were not enough, he was the star actor of the company, about 30 years later he would be Franca. Eight days after his birth, Ram played his first role and from then on represented characters adapted to his age. He was the youngest of the brothers and of them he learned to move around the stage.

The German occupation of Italy made the lives of travelling playwrights very difficult, so Ram dedicated his activity to nursing. He was expelled after two months of practice as a nurse, claiming that it was not useful for this. So, he jumped back into the theater world and, after introducing himself to a casting, he was taken to work with Darius Fo. In 1952, they married and built a life project. With the creation of the Fo-Rame company, they shared their personal and professional lives and worked all over the world. But we don't know what Fok learned from Rame. It is certainly difficult to measure, but from reading the statements of both of them it follows that many of the texts bearing the name of Fore were made among them. Ram was correcting, trimming and changing the texts to make them work better, and some of them are probably written only by Ram.

Around 1968, social and political theater gained strength. The couple dissolved the previous company and started moving in more radical parameters with the collective Nuova Scena. The theater group La Comune, through the organization Soccorso Rosso, formed by Rame and Fo, supported a factory occupied by workers. This institution was responsible for providing economic support, legal assistance and information on their rights to female political prisoners.

Its work also reflects political and social commitment. Tutta house, letto and chiesa, and altri (All house, bed and church, among others) is composed of eight monologues. It was published in 1977 and in its preamble Ram placed the work in the feminist framework. It covers topics that were once in full boiling: women in the working world, social movements, maternity, sexuality, the moral pressure of the church... From this work I would like to highlight a text: Lo Stupro (Rape). It counts the brutal rape of a woman by several men and the kidnapping and subsequent violence. It's written in a sense of anguish and fear, in a very credible way. Ram stated for many years that a text read in Quotidiano Donna magazine was brought to fiction. He kept his truth until 1987: through rape, a group of fascists wanted to punish his political activism and that text was an autobiographical monologue. Supported by the feminist movement, the author made a political reading of this experience later on.

Josune Muñoz, director of Skolastika, has been analyzing the autobiography systematically and within the culture of rape for years, stating that we are experiencing the boom of female autobiographies. Tarana Burke started collecting the necessary harvest of the #metoo campaign in 2006. Ram, like so many others, anticipated the explosion and did a courageous, high-impact job.

In 1983 Ram and Fok published the work Coppia aperta (Open pair). The topic may be topical: marriages, boring from their relationship, raise a more open relationship and discuss the table. The issue is very serious. But the text is full of humor, irony, absurd situations and outrages, and it presents in an agile and fun way a series of profound reflections. It's interesting to read mouth up by varying the tones of oneself or with the roommate, why not? You can also interpret if you have a roommate, a husband or a woman, perhaps with the intention of saving an interview.

Would you not like to stop mentioning Sesso? He fell asleep or l’arte di scopare (Zen edo larrua jo). The work was created by Rame, Fo and his son James: Adam and Eba start from history and talk about the nerves of early sexual intercourse, menstrual tobacco, what mothers tell (no), the danger of illegal abortion, the insecurity of men, the non-temptation of penis, orgasm, clitoris, etc. Composed of short chapters and elaborated from humor, it is light. It was conceived with the intention of being used pedagogically in schools, in addition to for adults. As so many other times it was censored and excluded from educational programs in Italy.

Along with the rise of the feminist movement, Ram, who had hitherto maintained his role in the shadow, changed his way of speaking and used the term “our theatre” to underline his presence and work in these texts.

Rame was a beautiful woman, blonde, with big sunglasses and appeared in the media with eye-catching clothes and a smile. Many times they've described it as a bird. In the eyes of many there has been only one humble woman who was in the shadow of the Exiles. But that aspect kept a member of a family of playwrights, a smart, interesting and passionate woman. An avant-garde playwright in Italian culture. The powerful woman who brought with her the social and political movements of the time, took a step forward. A person laughing at himself. And what he was able to calm his life by making others laugh, charismatic.

It is a pity that it cannot be read in Basque. And sad that the Spanish publications are old. It would be nice to publish these texts, read with the current input and look. This would give the author his place. Meanwhile, although Italian is not understood, it is worth entering Youtube and typing the name of Franca Ram to see the theatres of the time in depth and to see how the spectator responds laughter to spontaneity.