Philippos Philippou on Ubu Roi and Visual Theatre

I always wanted to explore visual theatre. Ubu Roi's absurd structure offers the opportunity for wide experimentation on the level of form. In fact, the play is the precursor of the theatre of absurd. 

The story unfolds rapidly in many countries in Europe; from France to Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Livonia and finally from the Baltics through Germany and Hamlet’s Elsinore to the North Sea. That in itself provides the opportunity either for a heterogeneous stage design or for the succession of different sets. 

The stage designers and Jarry himself produced a painted backdrop which combined extreme simplification and stylisation. The backdrop depicted owls, elephants, palm trees and a fireplace in relation to the carnival style costumes which lacked local references and did not recall any historical period. The play offers the chance to play with many heterogeneous elements in order to envision Jarry’s notion of the Nowhere/Everywhere.

MIRO

When I studied the play during my Masters, I discovered that many artists dealt with Ubu Roi. Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Jean Miro. The latter, created some extraordinary lithographs based on Ubu Roi in order to ridicule the dictator Franco in Spain. Our performance pays homage to their heritage while placing it in dialogue with the advent of new visual technologies.