SOURCE: Zelenak, Michael. “Ubu Rides Again: The Irondale Project and the Politics of Clowning.” Theatre 18, no. 3 (summer-fall 1987): 43-5.

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...