Ubu, Puppetry, and Parody

The main difference between Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu and the other modernist plays featured in this blog, Jarry had a set idea for the design and this has largely been stuck to throughout various productions of the play and adaptations into other forms. Jarry’s design for Pa Ubu as a fat, extremely round man in with a black spiral drawn across his front has endured.

King Ubu is in part a parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  Shakespeare is popularly considered the finest works of English literature ever, so it is unsurprising that Jarry chooses it to parody and mock within his play. Jarry’s work was a precursor to the Dada movement within modernism and holds many of the same values: the point of Dada means that nothing means anything, much like King Ubu means nothing. Even the title and characters names are nonsense, while sometimes translated as ‘King Turd’ from the French title Ubu Roi, it has been stated that Ubu is a nonsense word evolving from the name of Jarry’s schoolteacher, who originally inspired Jarry to write the play when he was a schoolboy. The difference between Pa Ubu and most Shakespeare villains is that Pa Ubu has no great motivating factors or backstory, he is just inherently bad and stupid in his plot to kill the king and take over. Pa Ubu even soliloquises like a Shakespearean villain but ends his speech with ‘Bloody good speech. Why thangyew. Pity no one else was listening. Back to work!’[1] showing that Pa Ubu is still not taken seriously, nor does he take himself seriously like a villain who feels the need to lay out his grand plan and motivations to the audience.

Originally, King Ubu only managed two stage performances (one being the dress rehearsal) before it sparked a riot with its opening line of ‘merde!’, which has been given various forms in English translation but all along the lines of ‘shit!’, and was banned from performance. Due to this, Jarry swapped live actors for puppets. The puppets mark Pa Ubu as even more of a ridiculous being, he becomes even more a parody of a grand villain when reduced to a simple puppet, something mostly associated with children’s entertainment. The relationship between Ma and Pa Ubu is reminiscent of Punch and Judy from their comic abuse to one another, as at the beginning Pa Ubu remarks to Ma Ubu ‘you look really ugly today. Because we’ve got company?’[2].  Kimberly Jannarone writes ‘Bringing the rural puppet into focus in a discussion of the Ubu cycle, Kimberly Jannarone exposes Père Ubu’s identity as a class hybrid, whose maddening and elusive nature stems from the fusion of popular and elite forms. Further, she reveals that Jarry’s use of puppet forms is radically different from that of the Symbolists, who conceived puppets as theoretical figures within a fully formed aesthetic doctrine. By contrast, Jarry used puppets for their very incompleteness – their makeshift nature making them ideal catalysts for the audience’s imaginations.’[3] The fusion of the popular and the elite, Shakespeare into a puppet show, is a furthering lowering of the form and an emphasis on its lack of higher meaning. The puppets ‘incompleteness’ is also a reason why Ubu has been so popular for adaptation.

Ubu’s roots in puppet theatre as well as its characters that seem more like caricatures than human has meant that it has been a popular piece to adapt into puppet shows. These adaptations have not just followed the original play’s plotline, but have adopted Pa Ubu as a symbol of mocking for, in particular, clueless political leaders. Currently, if you search for information on King Ubu online a popular suggestion to add to your search is Donald Trump. Despite King Ubu premiering in the late 19^th Century, Jarry’s careless villain has captured something timeless in the oppressor. William Kentridge directed and designed ‘Ubu and The Truth Commission’, a play featuring Ubu used as a commentary on apartheid South Africe. “One of the characteristics of Jarry’s Ubu is that there is no affect in anything he does,” says Kentridge, who animates Jarry’s drawing in one of his backdrop films. “Yes, we did this, we butchered these people, but why are you accusing me of being a monster?”[4]  .    Kentridge‘s play is in response to those who committed atrocities during apartheid being given amnesty despite their crimes, and Ubu parallels this in his meaningless slaughter and lack of consequence.

A Guardian article on King Ubu and Kentridge’s adaptation states ‘It’s often said that Ubu Roi uncannily predicted the fascist regimes of the 20th century, but this is because it experiments with violence in a way that anticipated fascism.’ but I think that King Ubu simply illustrated the human nature to do awful, violent things over and over again throughout history, and that it does not require great motivation to do so.

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[1] [Gale, Maggie et al.The Routledge Drama Anthology and Sourcebook: From Modernism to Contemporary Performance] p. 200.

[2] p. 190

[3] Kimberly Jannarone, ‘Puppetry and Pataphysics’ in New Theatre Quarterly Volume 17, Issue 3. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

[4] ‘Pulling the strings’ The Guardian, 1999. <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/1999/jun/09/artsfeatures1&gt;

Bibliography

The Guardian, ‘Pulling the strings’. (1999). https://www.theguardian.com/culture/1999/jun/09/artsfeatures1 [accessed 24/01/2020]

Jannarone, Kimberly, ‘Puppetry and Pataphysics’ in New Theatre Quarterly Volume 17, Issue 3. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Jarry, Alfred, ‘King Ubu’ in The Routledge Drama Anthology and Sourcebook: From Modernism to Contemporary Performance, Maggie Gale et al. (London: Routledge)