TIMETABLES : 9:30pm at Felix Poulat place, and 10:15pm at the Theatre de Verdure - Grenoble -
PRICES : free
Alfred Jarry took the ispiration for his Ubu Roi from the departure of one of his junior high school professors, the Père Hébert, the laughing stock of his students. He also harks back to Shakespeare’s theatre and in particular to the Macbeth. Actually, the first scene of the pièce in which the mother (Mère Ubu) suggests to her husband to murder the king (Roi Venceslas), creates a parallel with the moment Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to kill Duncan in order to gain his throne. Jarry choses to a tragic theme but comes out with a grotesque adaptation. The romantic Victor Hugo’s theatre combined the sublime and the grotesque too, but Jarry, even sustaining this legacy, aims to an extreme interpretation of these aspects. The first line of the script is actually “Merdre” (shit), and it was that proper word that, during the first Ubu Roi’s representation at the Nouveau Théâtre of Paris in 1896, sounded like a scandal, shocking the audience. From that moment, the reputation of the show, and his director, was made and it would have not easily changed.
What does the story tell?
Following his wife’s advice (Mère Ubu), and counting on the support of the captain Bordure, Ubu murders Wenceslas, the Polish king and claims his power. The only survivors of the carnage are the eldest Wenceslas’s son and his wife, the Queen.
Ubu is praised by the kingdom population. In order to keep all the power for himself, he cheats on a promise he had once made: he would have not nominate captain Bordure as the Duke of Lithuania. Then, he seizes all the Nobilty’s richness having every single member murdered. A crime after the other, he has the judges and business men killed too and eventually, he addresses to the population itself. The citizens rise against him while captain Bordure runs away in Moscow, to ask for the Tsar intervention.
Thus, Ubu decides to declare him war and invades Ukraine. When he realises he is about to lose the fight he has started, pulls back and finds a safe shelter in a cave in Lithania. Once there, he defeats a bear but, while he is asleep, his last few allied leave him.
Then his mother comes, but she brings nothing but her disappointment for his son. Bougrelas, Wenceslas’s survived son comes with his troops. The couple runs away, getting on board towards the France boundaries, where Père Ubu is taking into account the idea of becoming Minister of Finance.
A production : Crearc, with the Rencontres attendants
Text : Alfred Jarry - adaptation/text editing: Romano Garnier
Artistic direction : Romano Garnier/ Fernand Garnier
With the artists and directors collective : Marco Pernich, Fanny Fait, Angharad Phillips, Ieva Kaniusaite, Christian Verhoeven, Max Lebras, Marianne Seguin, Jordi Forcadas, Florin Didilescu, Yasmin Sidhwa, Nicolas Hanot, Alberto Ferraro
Costumes : Sarah Chabrier
Make-up : Laurence Perain
Dance : Allan Hutson
Voice and singing : Stefania Lo Russo
Arts of fire : Histoires 100 fins
Sound and lighting engineer : Crearc
French version
