The Theatre of “Theatre”
Much is made of Pere Ubu’s first line in Ubu Roi, “merdre,” and while it did indeed start a riot, the scatalogical reference was not the most startling aspect of the performance. Ubu Roi was envisioned by Alfred Jarry as a puppet/human show were people performed as innanimate objects and puppets stood in for people. The original production in 1896 was a unqualified fiasco, but it frightfully set the stage for a new kind of theatre that took the theatrical condition, actors on stage speaking lines from a play, and made that the subject of the play. By reinforcing the artificial conditions of theatre rather than the illusion, Jarry made the audience uncomfortably aware of the shalllow stupidity and empty artifice that constitutes the basis of theatre. For his efforts in “laying bare the device” (obnazenie priema), Alfred Jarry can be seen as the first modern theatre artist to see theatre concretely, that is he saw theatre as “theatre,” where the devices and conventions of the stage were not the given circumstances of the performance, but that they communicated as conventions and the illusion of the theatre was made evident in their appearance. From this point on the modern theatre became the theatre of “Theatre.”
