William Kentridge’s new multi-media production will employ Alfred Jarry’s despicable Ubu. HAZELFRIEDMAN spoke to him
He is the grotesque personification of human greed and ignorance. And now, 100 years after his theatrical birth in Europe with the unforgettable Merdre (shite) Ubu, the scandalous creation of 19th century poet Alfred Jarry has been adopted by South African artist and film-maker William Kentridge.
In an international first, Ubu will feature in a multi-media production with puppetry, traditional theatre and music, interspersed with documentary footage of the truth commission. Co-produced by Thomas Petz from Germany, Ubu will be performed in Europe in June 1997, followed by a run at the Grahamstown festival and the Market theatre.
The money will come from the coffers of festivals in Europe, South Africa’s Department of Arts and Culture and the Grahamstown festival, as well as from the profits of Faustus, Kentridge’s most recent multi-media success.
It all seems pretty much in the bag but this doesn’t prevent sleepless nights, cold sweats and the sheer terror which Kentridge is already experiencing.
‘I’m terrified before every production,’ he admits. “But I am certain that this one, more than any before, will inspire me to repeatedly ask myself: ‘What could I have possibly been thinking of to take on this production?”
It is not so much the scale of the production ‘Ubu will be more modest than Faustus’ that produces the night sweats. It’s the fear of failing to achieve conceptual coherence.
‘We’re going to be switching from hard documentary material to the burlesque of the Jarry character,’ explains Kentridge. ‘Our aim is to allow the documentary aspect to inform the burlesque in a new way, and vice versa. But of course it could fail horribly and be read as yet another example of Ubu-as-agit-prop theatre.’
For the unitiated, Ubu Roi started life as a schoolboy lampoon, a caricature of one of Jarry’s teachers, Felix Hebert, who epitomised the most heinous qualities of the bourgeoisie. He was pompous, boring, ignorant and ugly. From the specifics of this origin grew his universal symbolism. And, in creating him, Jarry progressively became Ubu.
‘I think there is Ubu in all of us,’ says Kentridge. Indeed, since his conception, Ubu has become a familiar historical figure, an agonisingly intimate everyman. He has been, variously, Nero, Hitler, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and the corporate fat cat. He has also been an image imitated by artists ranging from Picasso to Robert Hodgins. In the case of the latter, Ubu came to embody the anguish and hypocrisy of a country torn apart by its own absurd evil.
‘Today, when you look at Chief [Mangosuthu] Buthelezi opening his evidence at the truth commission by singing a hymn,’ says Kentridge, ‘and FW De Klerk standing before the commission without ‘arrogance’ or ‘shame’, you know that Ubu still exists.’