Royal
Last night I went out to see 'Ubu Roi', a one act play put on by theatre students from Curtin University as part of the Artrage Festival... sorry, that should just be ARTRAGE. WE SHOUT BECAUSE WE CARE. It used to be the artRage Festival, back around the turn of the century, when reArranging capital letters was the fashionAble way To subvert the DominanT ParaDigm. It's nice to see one's artistic betters keeping up with modern grammatical trends.
As a white middle-aged middle-class Christian male, and thus having the words "fair game" tattooed on my forehead, I was a little concerned going into the performance. The outline in the program said, in part, that this play embodied "a style of theatre that embraces chaos and eschews morality" and operates outside of "safe and non-offensive boundaries". And we all know what that means in alternative theatre, don't we. Full frontal nudity. Simulated (if we're lucky) sex. Ear-blistering profanity. Blasphemy. Bodily fluids whose presence would ordinarily breach Occupational Health & Safety laws. And, worst of all, audience participation. I felt a certain amount of trepidation, not least because I was sitting in the front row and wearing my favourite suit.
And twenty minutes into the performance, it was easy to see why 'Ubu Roi' caused a near-riot when it was first performed. ... the caveat being that it was first performed in 1896. They didn't even have full frontal nudity in the bath in 1896, much less on stage, and the closest they came to profanity was shouting words you can just as easily hear in thirty year old episodes of 'The Goodies'. Whew! I hate being offended. It's so left-wing.
It's a play about the avarice, cruelty and infantile misbehaviour of our political masters. Of course it would have been scandalous in the late 19th century, but between 1896 and 2006 the years of Jane Fonda, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and anyone who so much as mentioned politics between 1967 and 1979 have altered the philosphical landscape so dramatically that the idea of a greedy, violent, stupid leader is not a cause for scandal but an accepted piece of political reality. One might as well try to scandalise an audience with the concept that real estate agents occasional embellish the truth to sell houses.
Pa Ubu, a creature of more or less pure acquisitive id, plots with his wife Ma Ubu and his colleague Captain McNure to rise up and overthrow the Polish royal family, and take the throne himself. King Wencelaus and his family are duly massacred, except for his youngest child, Buggerlaus, who escapes into the countryside.
Ubu cheerfully overhauls the tax system, kills off the nobility and the judiciary, has punch-ups with his wife and turns on McNure, locking him in the dungeon. But McNure escapes and runs away to Russia, where the Emperor Alexis, accessorised with a furry hat, a tutu, a vodka bottle and a Russian accent so thick you could insulate your house with it, agrees to help him overthrow Ubu.
Meanwhile, Buggerlaus is inflaming the peasantry to revolution. While Ubu and the army are off fighting the Russians, Buggerlaus takes back the throne from Ma Ubu. She escapes, meets up with a routed Ubu, and together they stagger down to the sea, jump on a ship, and set sail for a new life in France... where it's implied they'll get up to all their old tricks again.
Of course that's just the bare bones of the plot. In the meantime there's shouting, banging, a foodfight, a bear attack, a chainsaw massacre, a huge fight scene that even the stage hands and prop wranglers got involved in, and, most terrifying of all, shadow puppetry. It was originally intended to be a scathing satire of socio-political mores, but with the way society has evolved since 1896, it has simply become a cheerfully surreal and idiotic romp, celebrating the fun of physical chaos.
And despite the bits of fried chicken and fake blood spurting all over the place, I'm glad to say that none of it splattered on my suit. I did get hit in the head with a cannonball, but fortunately it was polystyrene, so no harm done.
Oddly enough, the most subversive part of the performance was unintentional. In the middle of the big fight scene, I noticed something tiny and bright green creeping towards me across the cement floor. It was a small praying mantis, which had obviously hitched a ride in on one of the props. It looked terrified, lurching across the floor with that drunken gait that mantises have, as men in tutus and women in army uniforms shrieked and crashed and thudded all around it. I imagine that the only thing going through its head was "Oh crap oh crap oh crap just what in the HELL is going on up there!!?"
It made it to the safety of the bleachers, by the way. I thought you'd want to know.
As a white middle-aged middle-class Christian male, and thus having the words "fair game" tattooed on my forehead, I was a little concerned going into the performance. The outline in the program said, in part, that this play embodied "a style of theatre that embraces chaos and eschews morality" and operates outside of "safe and non-offensive boundaries". And we all know what that means in alternative theatre, don't we. Full frontal nudity. Simulated (if we're lucky) sex. Ear-blistering profanity. Blasphemy. Bodily fluids whose presence would ordinarily breach Occupational Health & Safety laws. And, worst of all, audience participation. I felt a certain amount of trepidation, not least because I was sitting in the front row and wearing my favourite suit.
And twenty minutes into the performance, it was easy to see why 'Ubu Roi' caused a near-riot when it was first performed. ... the caveat being that it was first performed in 1896. They didn't even have full frontal nudity in the bath in 1896, much less on stage, and the closest they came to profanity was shouting words you can just as easily hear in thirty year old episodes of 'The Goodies'. Whew! I hate being offended. It's so left-wing.
It's a play about the avarice, cruelty and infantile misbehaviour of our political masters. Of course it would have been scandalous in the late 19th century, but between 1896 and 2006 the years of Jane Fonda, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and anyone who so much as mentioned politics between 1967 and 1979 have altered the philosphical landscape so dramatically that the idea of a greedy, violent, stupid leader is not a cause for scandal but an accepted piece of political reality. One might as well try to scandalise an audience with the concept that real estate agents occasional embellish the truth to sell houses.
Pa Ubu, a creature of more or less pure acquisitive id, plots with his wife Ma Ubu and his colleague Captain McNure to rise up and overthrow the Polish royal family, and take the throne himself. King Wencelaus and his family are duly massacred, except for his youngest child, Buggerlaus, who escapes into the countryside.
Ubu cheerfully overhauls the tax system, kills off the nobility and the judiciary, has punch-ups with his wife and turns on McNure, locking him in the dungeon. But McNure escapes and runs away to Russia, where the Emperor Alexis, accessorised with a furry hat, a tutu, a vodka bottle and a Russian accent so thick you could insulate your house with it, agrees to help him overthrow Ubu.
Meanwhile, Buggerlaus is inflaming the peasantry to revolution. While Ubu and the army are off fighting the Russians, Buggerlaus takes back the throne from Ma Ubu. She escapes, meets up with a routed Ubu, and together they stagger down to the sea, jump on a ship, and set sail for a new life in France... where it's implied they'll get up to all their old tricks again.
Of course that's just the bare bones of the plot. In the meantime there's shouting, banging, a foodfight, a bear attack, a chainsaw massacre, a huge fight scene that even the stage hands and prop wranglers got involved in, and, most terrifying of all, shadow puppetry. It was originally intended to be a scathing satire of socio-political mores, but with the way society has evolved since 1896, it has simply become a cheerfully surreal and idiotic romp, celebrating the fun of physical chaos.
And despite the bits of fried chicken and fake blood spurting all over the place, I'm glad to say that none of it splattered on my suit. I did get hit in the head with a cannonball, but fortunately it was polystyrene, so no harm done.
Oddly enough, the most subversive part of the performance was unintentional. In the middle of the big fight scene, I noticed something tiny and bright green creeping towards me across the cement floor. It was a small praying mantis, which had obviously hitched a ride in on one of the props. It looked terrified, lurching across the floor with that drunken gait that mantises have, as men in tutus and women in army uniforms shrieked and crashed and thudded all around it. I imagine that the only thing going through its head was "Oh crap oh crap oh crap just what in the HELL is going on up there!!?"
It made it to the safety of the bleachers, by the way. I thought you'd want to know.
posted by Blandwagon at 6:29 PM
2 Comments:
Whew! Poor mantis.
Good to see the wagon is hitched back up!
What's NOT addressed in this post and begs for exposition is why you found yourself esCheWing codifIed moralitY in the first place.
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