The first version of Ubu roi is a text composed of collected works from schoolchildren making fun of their pyhsics teacher at a high school in Rennes, western France. Jarry was fifteen years old when he wrote a play out of those ideas and had it performed by a puppet theatre company in 1888. He published it in Mercure de France, in 1896, under the title: Ubu roi. A play in five acts in prose. It then took on the form it had had when played by puppets at the théâtre des Phynances in 1888. The same year, the play was staged by Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre and the public was outraged. The word "merdre" that was uttered for the first time since its creation in 1888 was apparently scandalous. And if in 2001 the scandal in Ubu comes from the fact that fiction is more real than our own reality, and worse still that the intolerable nature of this reality has become tolerable ? Every morning, sad Ubu clones seem to peer out at us from the newspapers we skim through.
Distribution
stage direction Bernard Sobel
Michel Bompoil : La Reine Rosemonde, le Général Lascy, Michel Federovitch, noble, magistrat, financier, paysan, conseiller
Olivier Cruveiller : Palotin Pile, Ladislas, conseiller
Cyril Dubreuil : Palotin Giron, Boleslas, conseiller
Bernard Ferreira : L'Empereur Alexis, messager, noble, magistrat, financier, paysan
Claude Guyonnet : Capitaine Bordure, l'ours
Mathias Jung : Le Roi Venceslas, noble, magistrat, financier, paysan
Denis Lavant : Père Ubu
Flore Lefebvre des Noëttes : Mère Ubu
Jean-Paul Rouvray : Palotin Cotice, conjuré, paysan, conseiller
Damien Witecka : Bougrelas, Nicolas Renski, noble
Director : Bernard Sobel
In collaboration with : Michèle Raoul-Davis
Decor and costumes : Titina Maselli
Director's assistant : Nour Eddine Elansari
Production
production : Théâtre de Gennevilliers-centre dramatique national
avec le soutien de : la ville de Gennevilliers, du conseil régional d'Ile de France et du conseil général des Hauts-de-Seine