British company Cheek by Jowl is best known for its innovative Shakespearean and classical productions that have been seen all over the world. Since 1981, the company has produced work in English, French, and Russian under the joint artistic direction of designer Nick Ormerod and director Declan Donnellan. After a successful previous collaboration, in 2007, Peter Brook invited Cheek by Jowl to work with a group of French actors to perform Jean Racine’s Andromaque. Following that production’s success, Donnellan and Ormerod decided to work with the same French actors on their new production of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi.
Ubu Roi is considered by many to precede modernism and the subsequent artistic movements of surrealism, Dada, and, most clearly, Theatre of the Absurd. It premiered in Paris in 1896 and, according to theatrical lore, caused an explosive riot in the audience and closed immediately after its opening performance. This modern dress production of Ubu Roi recreated the events of the drama using the furnishings of a teenage boy’s richly appointed family apartment and the guests of his parents’ dinner party. From their very first reading, Ormerod and Donnellan saw the play as funny but also incredibly daunting.
This grotesque reimagining of the action was conceived to be seen through the eyes of 14-year-old Jarry as, according to Ormerod, “it seems to become clear to us that Mère and Père Ubu are substitutes for his own parents.”
The audience entering the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre was greeted with a view of this tasteful, sparse, but lavishly furnished and mostly white apartment. Ormerod says that the space developed organically, and he and Donnellan were clearly influenced by their own surroundings during the early production process. “We were staying in a flat in Paris, and as it turns out, the flat we put on stage turned into that apartment.”
On stage was a teenage boy playing with a video camera. It appeared that the camera was shooting live, and the audience saw the view through the camera lens projected onto the upstage wall. As the house dimmed, the boy walked offstage, and the audience watched a tour of the beautiful apartment behind the scenes. All of the objects that the boy noticed with the camera reappeared in his conjuring of Ubu’s story.
The World Of Ubu Roi
The action of Jarry’s play emerged from a silent film-style enactment of an elaborate dinner party planned by the boy’s parents. Using live-stream video and huge gestures of colored light in this production, the teenager conjured the world of Ubu Roi from what he saw before him. All of the spoken text came from Jarry’s play. The use of the video served as a way into the play for Ormerod and Donnellan, as Ormerod explains. “It seemed a way in to express how he—the boy—was seeing things. The opening film showed everything, even the dirt beneath the exterior or the world he lives in.” The Cheek by Jowl team worked together organically, giving the space to the actors to play in and then creating the final design around them.
The adaptation of the production, which was designed to tour into the Lincoln Center Festival venue, was relatively easy. The scenery was designed to expand or contract from approximately 19' to 33', depending on the stage. Director of production for the festival Paul King says that, when they received the set, which had been built for the premiere in Paris, “nothing had to be redone for New York. It even passed the fire-proofing test.” This is not always the case, as New York City fire codes differ from many other cities and are usually much stricter. In general, the load-in went like clockwork.
There were three challenges that the Lincoln Center Festival staff and the Cheek by Jowl team had to address during pre-production to ease the New York presentation. The hardest was prepping for the restore of the show each night. During the action of the play, the beautiful, white apartment gets essentially trashed, covered in food, debris, and even a swath of ketchup across the wall. This was complicated mostly because of varying labor laws and expectations. King explains, “We had planned to add time after the performance to clean to the extent that the white wool carpet on the deck was not stained. We had to grapple with the company’s traditional European approach to the daytime work, which conflicts with the usual hours built into a show call, so we had to wait until we were all in the same place and saw the mess to arrive at a solution. We had a long negotiation, and ultimately, the French staff worked hard to compromise.”
The complicated video design of the show presented other preparatory challenges. Much of the video content was designed to come from downstage with the footlights. This could have potentially been a problem with the already high stage in the Gerald W. Lynch. Much of the action of the show happened on the floor so sightlines were a serious consideration. Luckily, as King explains, “The pit lift could be lowered, and we worked out in advance the appropriate level to avoid sightline problems.”
King notes that there was one change which led to some on-the-fly adaptation. “What was unexpected, but not surprising, was that we agreed in pre-production to install masking in a particular way, which was a departure from how they originally drew it,” he says. “Once they got here, they changed their minds and asked that the original scheme be installed.” Given the excellent production support of the Lincoln Center Festival, this was only a very small bump along the way.
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Gear List And Credits
Lighting Equipment
(provided by PRG)
- 2 ETC Source Four 19° Ellipsoidal
- 4 ETC Source Four 26° Ellipsoidal
- 6 ETC Source Four 36° Ellipsoidal
- 9 ETC Source Four 50° Ellipsoidal
- 14 ETC Source Four Zoom 25°-50°
- 1 Arri 5kW Theatrical Tungsten Fresnel
- 7 Arri 2kW Studio Fresnel
- 50 Altman Lighting PAR 64 MFL
- 18 Altman Lighting PAR 64 NSP
- 8 Altman Lighting PAR 64 VNSP
- 2 Altman Lighting 1 Cell Sky Cyc
- 8 Altman Lighting 2 Circuit 4'3'' ZipStrip
- 11 MR16 Birdie
- 2 Look Solutions Unique 2 Hazer
- D:Light PC-based Lighting Controller
- Enttec DMX Interface
Sound Equipment
(provided by PRG)
- 8 Meyer Sound UPA-1P
- 2 Meyer Sound USW Subwoofer
- 1 Yamaha LS9-32 Console
- 1 Meyer Sound Galileo Speaker Management System
- 1 Figure 53 QLab System
- 2 Neumann KM184
Video Equipment
(provided by Lincoln Center Festival)
- 2 Barco RLM-W12 Projector
(provided by Cheek by Jowl)
- 1 Panasonic 6kW Projector
- 1 Roland Edirol V4 Vision Mixer
- 1 Sony HDR-PJ580 Camera
- 1 Minette Dedolight
Cheek By Jowl Creative Team
- Director: Declan Donnellan
- Designer: Nick Ormerod
- Associate Director: Michelangelo Marchese
- Associate and Movement Director: Jane Gibson
- Assistant Director: Bertrand Lesca
- Costume Supervisor: Angie Burns
- Lighting Designer: Pascal Noel
- Composer & Sound Designer: Davy Sladek, with additional music by Paddy Cunneen
- Video Designers: Benoit Simon and Quentin Vigier
- Voice Coach: Valérie Bezançon
- Fight Director: François Rostain
- Technical Director: André Néri
- Original Production Managers: Dougie Wilson and Manuel Vidal
- Lighting and Video: Vincent Gabriel
- Sound: Clémentine Bergel and Kenan Trevien
- Wardrobe: Marina Aguilar
- ASM / Props: Jeanne Birckel and Camille Riquier
- Surtitles translation (English): Harold Manning
- Surtitles operator (English): Edward Fortes
- Company Manager: Edward Fortes
- Consultant Producer: Béatrice Catry (Théâtres et Cie)