The Exquisite Ubu project

An Exquisite Corpse of Ubu Roi

By Alfred Jarry 

adapted by [Your Name Here]

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By my Green Candle, how will that work?

In Ubu Roi, (and in the French Theater generally), a scene begins when a character exits or enters the stage. Since there are 45 characters in the play, many of the scenes in Jarry’s play are not even a page long, with the longest scene being five pages.

 

Participating writers have been given a single scene from the play to revise or rewrite in their own way. The first line of each distinct scene remained the same, so that the revised pieces will be linked together to tell the whole “story”. Naturally, all participating writers will be working from the same text which is provided (you can read it here). 

 

We asked writers to keep certain elements of the play intact, such as Ubu’s iconic “Green Candle”, a symbol of the perverse and chaotic nature of his rule. Writers who participated were given a detailed set of instructions and were asked to attend Zoom meetings about the project where logistics were discussed and questions were answered.

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As to the tone of the project: Alfred Jarry wrote Ubu Roi about his physics teacher, Félix-Frédéric Hébert but he never mentioned him by name. The play endures because it is a comment on greed, cowardice, cruelty, and chaos rather than a specific individual. 

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What about Phynance?

No one involved in this project is being paid. The performance will be free. If, by some quirk of fate, we were to make any money from the project, it would be donated to a pro-democracy organization and a full financial accounting would be provided to all participants.

 

Because this is a no-budget production, we will be asking our artists to help promote the project. See link above for the flyer. Feel free to distribute at will.