from irreverent to revered: how alfred jarry's ubu roi and the

269 Pages·2013·1.22 MB·English

by  Lance Mekeel

FROM IRREVERENT TO REVERED: HOW ALFRED JARRY’S UBU ROI AND THE
“U-EFFECT” CHANGED THEATRE HISTORY

Lance Mekeel

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green
State University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2013

Committee:

Jonathan Chambers, Ph.D., Advisor

Kara Joyner, Ph.D.
Graduate Faculty Representative

Lesa Lockford, Ph.D.

Scott Magelssen, Ph.D.
© 2013

Lance Mekeel

All Rights Reserved
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ABSTRACT

Jonathan Chambers, Advisor

For decades, theatre history textbooks and other influential studies on theatre history have
positioned Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry’s 1896 avant-garde “classic,” as the beginning or originator of
the historical avant-garde and precursor to the playwrights considered as part of Martin Esslin’s
“Theatre of the Absurd.” Much of this reputation is built on inaccurate accounts of the premiere
production, put down by those involved or in attendance, who had particular aims in reporting
the event in the ways they did. Those accounts would end up being put to use as the base on
which various scholars would establish the premiere of Ubu Roi as the ignition of the historical
avant-garde. This dissertation is a poststructuralist historiographical study in which I analyze the
various statements made, first by participants and witnesses to the premiere production, and then
by scholars and critics who take those accounts as factual, that place Ubu Roi on a path to
legitimization and inclusion in the Western canon. In my research, I examine initial accounts of
the premiere production, early post mortem accounts of Jarry’s life, the proliferation of the
character Ubu in early twentieth century French society, French and English critical and
biographical studies of Jarry and Ubu Roi, anthologies and edited collections of Ubu Roi, and
reviews and other related materials of several key French revivals and over fifteen English-
language revivals of the play.
I mark the emergence of three specific strategies that grew out of tactics Jarry employed
at the premiere. I demonstrate how the conflation of Jarry with his character Ubu, made possible
by his extraordinary performance of self at the premiere, the notion of the production’s innate
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ability to produce scandal, and the idea of Jarry’s implementation of a “revolutionary”
dramaturgy, are all used to make Ubu Roi the example par excellence of avant-garde drama. I
unite these three strategies under the title “U-Effect” to describe the subject position assumed by
those scholars and critics that privilege Ubu Roi as the epitome of the theatrical avant-garde.
With this as my guiding mode of critique, I examine such issues as the practice of writing Jarry’s
biography, how the inclusion of Ubu Roi in anthologies of drama and histories of the avant-garde
has affected the construction of theatre history, and how productions of the play reinforce,
maintain, or subvert the play’s power in scholarly and cultural discourse. Encouragingly, some
recent studies have challenged Ubu Roi’s seat at the head of the avant-garde, and in this study I
underline how scholars have posed those challenges. It is important to expose the process
through which Ubu Roi has attained its chief position in the avant-garde in order to be able to see
more clearly whether there are other narratives that may provide students of theatre history—if
not a complete image or story of the avant-garde—at least a more nuanced, and varied one.
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For Sarah, always.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible if not for the assistance, guidance, and
support of so many people. I have several teachers and mentors to thank for their direct impact in
the early stages of my approach to Ubu Roi. Doug Powers, Shawn Kairschner, and Father David
Cregan all allowed me to explore various aspects of the text in my undergraduate and masters
studies. Those opportunities only served to strengthen my desire to continue to think and write
about the play.
I have to thank the staffs of two libraries, which were crucial in assisting my research.
Thank you to the staff of the New York Public Library Performing Arts Branch, which I visited
several times at various stages of this project. I am also thankful for the support of BGSU Jerome
Library’s Interlibrary Loan staff and research librarian Stefanie Hunker, who facilitated the
pursuit of many obscure French articles/books and newspaper articles from around the world.
The BGSU community has been a wonderful environment in which to complete my
research. Thanks to Robert Berg, of the department of Romance and Classical Studies, for
helping me obtain the French reading proficiency necessary for taking on this project. I must
thank the Department of Theatre and Film Graduate Committee for honoring me with the 2012-
2013 Dissertation Fellowship—if I did not have this fellowship, I may still be writing my
prospectus. Our program’s graduate students are a very supportive group, and I am grateful for
their friendship and encouragement. My cohort, Sarah Katka, Patrick Konesko, and JP Staszel,
deserves special thanks for obliging my desire to share my interests with them, for tremendous
assistance with my writing, and for camaraderie throughout our coursework.
I am enormously in debt to my doctoral committee for immeasurable support and
guidance. To Kara Joyner, my Graduate Faculty Representative, thank you for your invaluable
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questions and genuine support in our meetings. Many thanks to Lesa Lockford, for your
significant assistance with my writing, both in doctoral courses and in the exams and dissertation
process. This project would look a lot different (and I think a lot less rigorous) without the input
of Scott Magelssen, who equipped me with the tools to look at the play in this manner. Finally, I
owe so much to my advisor, Jonathan Chambers, for so many things over the past four years.
Here I will say thank you, Jonathan, for your patience, encouragement, and for your gentle
guidance throughout this process in helping to hone my writing and make this project viable.
Without friends and family, I could not have made it this far. Thank you to Stephen
Harrick and Matt Saltzberg, for being there to talk (and text) through writing issues, and for
moral support. Thank you also to Jeff LaRocque, for much needed comic relief and friendship.
My family has been my biggest set of supporters. My dad, my brother Wes, and my brother-in-
law Caleb have all supported me the whole way through this process, and I am grateful for it. I
owe a huge thanks to those family members (even if they are not actual family, I certainly
consider them family) who sent me “care packages” throughout the writing process: my mom,
my second parents Bob and Jill, Lindsay and Todd, Katie and Dave, Kelly and Jim, and Matt.
Your outpouring of love and support—especially in the form of peach rings—kept me going as I
was struggling through the writing process. The care package system was organized by my
biggest supporter, motivator, and inspiration: my wife, Sarah. This was just one of so many ways
she made my process easier and more pleasant. I owe much of my success to her; without her, I
would not have been able to accomplish many of the things I am proud of as an adult.
Finally, two notes on the text. Where there is a reliable translation of a scholarly work or
text of Jarry’s in English, I have used it; anywhere else, the translations are my own, unless
otherwise noted. I also take full claim to any errors or faults in the study.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………..........................1
CHAPTER 1: “La Bombe Comique” ............................................................................................21
Section A: Context, Publication, Premiere Performance, and Confusion of Event .........22
Section B: The Making of Jarry’s (After)Life and Ubu’s Rise .......................................38
Section C: Dada, Surrealism, Artaud and Ubu .................................................................48
Section D: The Second Ubu Controversy and Lugné-Poe’s 1922 Revival ......................58
Section E: First Biographies, Full-Length Analyses of Jarry and his Works, and the
Establishment of Ubu Roi’s Legitimacy in France ...............................................63
Section F: College of Pataphysics and Other French Scholarship-late 1940s-1950s, and
Jean Vilar’s Ubu Roi .............................................................................................71
Section G: Ubu Goes English-Initial Translations of Ubu and English-Language
Scholarship on Jarry and Ubu ...............................................................................80
CHAPTER 2: Ubu Ascends to His Throne ...................................................................................91
Section A: Using Ubu Roi to Frame the Contemporary Avant-Garde in the 1960s .........95
Section B: French Scholarship and Collections in the 1960s to mid-1970s ...................107
Section C: English-language Translations, Collections, and Scholarship on Jarry and
Ubu-1960s-1970s ...............................................................................................114
Section D: Academe Overrun by Jarry: French and English Scholarship in the 1980s .134
Section E: Contemporary French and English Jarry Scholarship-1990-Present ............146
Section F: Contemporary Treatments of the Avant-Garde .............................................158
CHAPTER 3: Ubu Takes the Stage ............................................................................................169
Section A: Professional Productions in the US and the UK, 1952-1960 ........................172
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Section B: Ubu and his Royal Court: Ubu Makes His Presence Known in the UK .......179
Section C: Professional Productions in the US, 1970-1976 ...........................................186
Section D: Peter Brook’s Ubu .........................................................................................195
Section E: Productions in the UK and the US, 1977-1989 .............................................203
Section F: Lincoln Center Theater’s Ubu .......................................................................208
Section G: Productions in Canada, the US, and UK, 1990-2005 ...................................217
CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................229
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................239
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INTRODUCTION
The story goes that when Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi had its final dress rehearsal, its
répétition générale, on December 9, 1896, the audience of Aurelien Lugné-Poe’s Théâtre de
l’Œuvre at the Nouveau Théâtre in Paris had never seen anything like it before. Audience
members supposedly rioted after hearing the first word—“merdre,” a bastardization of the
French word for “shit”— and the riots lasted for fifteen minutes to a half hour, depending on
whose account one reads.1 The commotion only subsided when Firmin Gémier (the actor
charged with the task of portraying the grotesque title character, Père Ubu) danced a jig to get the
audience’s attention back on the stage. The rioting apparently recommenced, however, and
continued throughout the performance, occasionally interrupting the performers enough to make
them hold before moving on.2 Contemporary historians have called into question this received
narrative, placing in doubt how sensational the premiere performance actually was. For example,
according to Frantisek Deak, in his Symbolist Theater: the Formation of an Avant-Garde, “as far
as the scandal was concerned, the audience’s behavior was within the customary behavior of the
opening night audience” (228).3 Taking another approach is Alastair Brotchie, who in his 2011
biography, Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life, argues that Jarry orchestrated the event to create
scandal and controversy.

1 Among others, Roger Shattuck asserts the rioting lasted for half an hour (207) in his The Banquet Years. Alastair
Brotchie tends toward the leaner side of 15 minutes (243) in his account of the production in Alfred Jarry: A
Pataphysical Life.
2 Many contemporary scholars, including Keith Beaumont and Jill Fell, as well as Alastair Brotchie, assert that
while there were some interruptions to the final dress rehearsal, the main rioting did not occur on December 9, but
on the evening of the premiere performance, December 10. They argue that Madame Rachilde’s recollection of the
event in her 1928 memoir of Jarry, Alfred Jarry, le surmâle de lettres is incorrect, and that it led to many early
scholars reconstructing the event incorrectly.
3 In his 1986 book, France, Fin de Siècle, Eugen Weber reports that in the milieu of fin de siècle Paris, “many a
first—and only—night ended in chaos” (159). Weber’s statement supports the idea that the premiere was not such
an outstanding and unusual occurrence.