[In the following essay, Zelenak discusses a performance of an updated Ubu Roi to observe that clowning can create extremely pointed and compelling social commentary.]

Few dramatic works have attained the iconographic status of Alfred Jarry's Ubu roi. Its original two-performance production by Lugne-Poe in 1896 caused the greatest sensation in the French theater since Hugo's Hernani sixty years earlier. Jarry's play took only one word—the infamous merdre—to cause a near riot. Amidst the hysterical audience demonstrations, fist-fights and shower of missiles, the actors found themselves spectators to a theatrical event that dwarfed the one on stage. Although Ubu remains central to the avant-garde tradition, one might wonder: “Why revive Ubu?” And if one answers that question, a larger one looms: How to do Ubu ninety years later?

The Irondale Ensemble's New York production of Ubu roi (1984-87) put itself in an active relationship to the text, using it simply as a starting point, a “pre-text” for a performance. They approached Ubu as a comedy-parody of the bourgeois world spirit, an ironic celebration of its endless adaptability and will to survive. Furthermore, they had fun with Ubu. The Irondale's Ubu roi in some ways resembles a series of cabaret or burlesque skits. Just as much of Ubu is cartoon Shakespeare, the Irondale's is a cartoon Ubu. Very little of the actual Jarry text is used, but it follows the plot and incidents of the play fairly closely. The production is irreverent from its opening moment, which finds Ubu enthroned on the toilet, grumbling “Shit!”. Taking the cue from Jarry, the scatological metaphor is sustained throughout. When Ubu has to think hard or soliloquize, he retreats to his toilet seat; the cue for the beginning of Ubu's coup d'etat is the password “shit.” Pa Ubu (Josh Broder) is not a fully realized “character,” but a grabbag of comic techniques, most often the comic straight man or the deadpan stand-up comic. Pa Ubu is dim-witted and gross. He picks his nose, substitutes turds for meat at a state dinner to save money. He is an Aristophanic creation, operating from the basest, bottom-line human instincts, viz. food, sex and money. Ma Ubu (Molly Hickcock) is heavily camped, sometimes a la Mae West. The production is filled with low comedy, one liners, gags and intricate “bits” perhaps similar to the commedia dell'arte's lazzi. Its success is not due to any particularly brilliant comic moments but rather to the cumulative effect of the rapid succession of gags and routines and the almost endless invention of the company.

The level of humor ranges widely from slapstick and crude farce to literate satire. Irondale borrows from Shakespeare almost as much as Jarry did. Wenceslas is possibly even costumed to look like Duncan, and Ma Ubu's exhortations to her husband more than a little resemble Lady Macbeth. Wenceslas' wife has prophetic dreams very similar to those of Caesar's wife. A bear right out of The Winter's Tale eats most of Ubu's army near the end. In a parody of the parade of ghostly apparitions in Act V of Richard III, Pa Ubu has a similar vision. “Why have you come?” he questions the shades of his victims. “Because the show is going badly” they respond. It is surprising that the production holds together, since the audience is addressed directly so often. One scene is stopped halfway through because Ubu remembers that two scenes have been skipped. The humor is free-wheeling, at times reminding me of the old Firesign Theater. When the old Nobility beg King Ubu to spare their lives, he gives them a chance by presenting a mock “game show” where the category is “Reagan Fuck-ups.” The nobility are executed for the wrong answer. Likewise, the “Financial advisors,” an identically costumed chorus of moustached, cigar-chomping Groucho Marxes who move in unison, get a similar opportunity to play charades for their lives. They get the right answer, but are executed for not getting a laugh. There are references to everything from My Favorite Martian and “Eggo Waffles” to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, evoked by Ma and Pa Ubu in the last scene as they sneak out of Poland and sail into the sunset.

The Jarry plot is the basic scene-by-scene scenario for Irondale's Ubu. The hen-pecked Pa Ubu is pushed by his wife into leading a coup to topple King Wenceslas of Poland and seize the crown for himself. He is aided, in the Irondale production, by Manure, Duke of Lithuania. Ubu redistributes the wealth (“Ninety per cent of the wealth for me!”), doublecrosses everyone and is transformed from “a skinny little runt” to a bloated hedonist with pillows padding his belly. But Ubu remains the Master of Ceremonies, the clown controlling the action, also doubling as narrator and interpreter. He is constantly improvising one-liners and slipping quick jokes to the audience. Each sequence or scene is like a Saturday Night Live version of the Jarry original. The play becomes a pretext for the company to hang its jokes on. When the conspirators plan the murder of Wenceslas, Manure (Paul Lazar), Duke of Lithuania, gets a little carried away in his enthusiasm:

MANURE:
My plan … is to take my stiff, hard, gleaming sword out of its sheath and shove it into his parted flesh and start to thrust, thrust, thrust (getting excitied).
UBU:
Cut through the hormones, Manure!

Later, when Manure gets similarly excited by the prospect of total war against the anti-Ubu armies, Pa Ubu cuts him off with: “That's fine for you, you're into that quasi-homosexual ritualistic behavior.” Ubu continuously switches from character to actor to clown. He taunts the chained and manacled Manure with:

UBU:
This is it. You're not getting out of here. You're gonna die. You ain't ever gonna be in Shakespeare in the Park, you're never gonna do that Dr. Pepper commercial, never be on David Letterman.

The most interesting incorporation of the audience into the performance is a series of abrupt interruptions of the play's action, modelled on the Aristophanic parabasis. Sometimes Ubu steps out of the play to explain some aspect of improvisational theater or the company's work. At one point Ubu paces through the audience and muses:

Those of you who've seen our plays before know that we're a political company. You may be wondering why is this political company doing a play about shit? Not only about shit, but shit for shit's sake.

Ubu promises that the play will get more political. Later, General Lasky, Commander of the pro-Ubu armies, marches out and tells the audience that the company has been heavily criticized by “textual purists” for mutilating Jarry's text. In an effort to be more faithful to the original script, a simultaneous French reading of the text will now be given so that the critics can check for accuracy. He then introduces Sven, a Swedish-born graduate of the Sorbonne, who proceeds to translate everything being said into French (with a noticeable Swedish lilt). The situation becomes hilarious as Sven tries to “take over the play,” getting in the way of the actors and turning even commonplace exchanges into wildly funny sequences. In effect, we are following several different levels of action or “texts within a text:” the text of Jarry's Ubu, the Irondale's commentary on that text, and another “text” created by the improvisation and dialogue with the audience.

Despite the numerous contemporary references, the production is not overtly or obviously political. The specific political references, jokes and parallels all seem part of the overall comedic momentum, not its point. But Ma and Pa Ubu perhaps represent a more insidious attack on middle class values, habits and ethics. Pa Ubu is so likeable (“the Santa Claus of the Atomic Age” as one critic has put it) not because he is a negation of bourgeois values, but their apotheosis. Ubu knows no moderation—he is bourgeois values writ large, taken to extremes. He is the ultimate glutton, miser, sadist and egomaniac. Ubu is cold, raw bourgeois instinct with bad manners and without tact. He has no pretenses and the Ubu Administration has no P.R. director. Ubu is the bourgeoisie seen from the belly down. Appropriately, the distinguishing mark of the pro-Ubu armies is their stomachs: the Ubu Loyalists all have padded paunches like their leader.

The production attempts to move to a political level through the use of non-specific and non-verbal techniques. The play begins with the company singing “I'm so happy to be an American” and ends with a flag-waving rendition of “It's a Grand Old Flag.” Beginning with the anti-Ubu Revolution, led by Buggerless, son (played by a woman) of the executed King, the purely physical, mimed aspect of the production increases. When Ubu exhorts his troops into war frenzy, a loud electronic metronome starts. The actors begin a sequence which I can only describe as a “biomechanical gestus of war ritual.” This is repeated during battle sequences. In the middle of the rousing flag-waving finale, the electronic cue comes again; the actors almost robot-like respond frantically to the cue. The metronome beats faster and faster as the lights fade while the gestus of war continues.

The Irondale's eclectic techniques, their ability to bring a contemporary feel to the imagination of the performance and, above all, the intense and dynamic audience-actor bond created by the improvisational nature of the performance, puts the audience in a very active relationship to the text and the theatrical event. The Irondale's work is always “in progress”; a play is rehearsed and performed over a period of years. The rehearsal process never stops, and the company stresses that performances are actually “shared rehearsals.” The Irondale's commitment to improvisational performance encourages the actors to experiment and make changes during performance, so that no two performances are the same. The performance text continues to evolve with parts being added or dropped. What we have is a very close parallel to the textual/performance process of the classical age of commedia dell'arte. Actors can discover a specific burla or “running gag” that works for this specific audience, or try to see how far the audience will go in a specific vein. They are also free to comment broadly on anything from current events to the performance and the audience. Rather than attempting to create any type of consistent or conventional characterization, the Ubu company is a company of clowns that seems to be making-up the characters as they go along, employing anything from song-and-dance, stand-up comedy, acrobatics, to low farce and mime.

Most theater seeks to render the audience passive; the result is the deadening feel to so many contemporary productions. It seeks to bludgeon us into a lethargic loss of individuality, to surrender up our consciousness so that our experience can be shaped and manipulated by the production. This technique is not without its social ramifications. Brecht was quick to realize that although this model can be made to work for Shakespeare and Ibsen, it also worked for Goebbels and Hitler—something about this “fascist” theater experience can effect our reactions to situations and events outside the theater. Interestingly, the theories of Wagner, Appia and Craig reached their zenith not at Bayreuth but at Nuremburg.

The Irondale's Ubu roi employs another model of consciousness. Its production lives, moment-to-moment, only by the direct, active involvement of its audience. There is no pre-determined terminal point when the production is “finished” or ready. It is a commonplace that comedy is subversive. The “low comedy” technique that marks clowning is perhaps anti-authoritarian by its very nature, and this type of satire is itself an act of rebellion. Clearly, Jarry's play is a rebellion against bourgeois values, ethics and “good taste.” The Irondale Ensemble attempts to extend this revolt further not simply by rebelling against Jarry's text but by the company's revolt against the notion of the fixed text and their refusal to accept the authoritarian restraints imposed upon conventional theater performance.