Gestas de Papá Ubú

By Compañía Ferroviaria de Artes Escénicas

17th November. Theatre L’altre Spai, Valencia

Characters:

Papá Ubú: Manuel Harnández plays Papá Ubú. A creature that is ambitious, abominable, silly, intrepid and vulgar. He wants to become the king so is able to kill someone he respects to aim it. His wife manages his life and he doesn’t realize. He is obscene and evil.

Mamá Ubú: Played by the actress Gema Segura, Mamá Ubú is even more ambicious than her husband. She doesn’t care about him, because the main porpoise of her life is to become rich. She betrays him with Memnón. She is a liar and fakes to be nice to whom she needs something from.

Memnón: Played by Mario Esteban, Memnón is a narcissist man, who thinks thaht everybody must love him and do love him; for that reason he trust mama Ubú and he becomes her lover. He also does whatever she wants to.

Monomonarca: also played by Mario Esteban. The Monomonarca is a self-confident person. H acts like the typical rich man, someone extravagant and who loves to spend money. He is a corrupt ‘Monomonarca’ but despite of it, he treats well to his friends like to Ubú.

Conciencia: He is Ubu’s conscience. Played by Cristian Weidmann, this character appears when Ubú is going to do something really mean. He reminds alerts Ubú about the possible consequences of his acts and most of the times Ubú hit him. He wears a diaper which may mean that Ubú was a good person just the very moment he born, and later he became as bad as he is now.

Pueblo: Played by the rest of the actors, the poor and starving people work hard for their monarch and when they see they mean nothing to their King, they make a revolution to achieve what they need. But they are also human so some of them fall into corruption.

There are more characters like the Soldados and the Nobles, who fake loyalty to Ubú or to whoever has the power and money.

Space:

It begins in some kind of circus where Ubú and Mamá Ubú live. But later they change the scenery as needed for example when Ubú moves to the Monarch’s palace.

Lights:

Lights were all the time directed to the characters. They also were used to create the illusion of a lot of movement like the crazy actions of the protagonist. The tonalities they used to achieve those effects were orange, yellow and red lights. When the actors needed to change of decoration, the lack of illumination allowed them to do it better.

Clothing:

The clothing was made of old and tore clothes. The clothes were used sometimes to make us laugh like when Memnón goes out in tanga, and there was obviously a deeper intention in the soldier costumes.

Decoration elements:

They used elements in a creative and recycling way.  For example a big drum could be used as his toilet, as a jail or as a platform, as a black hole or even as a throne. The best was Ubú’s Nation flag emulating the bars and stars of the American flag.

Audience reaction or incidents:

Audience were very excited and receptive to every joke. And also there were some moments remain quiet and thoughtful with the memories that the parody of a ‘fascist’ brought them. And at the end it didn’t defeat anybody; the spectators went out very satisfied with the play.

Personal point of view:

This particular vision of what an insignificant creature, who was full of hate and ambition, could do and achieve; remembered us how ridiculous and dangerous could be those ‘Ubús’ spread around the world who feel they own it and who do whatever they want because they feel so powerful to  the point of forgetting  their own nation. For me, this play had just the perfect point of irony, sarcasm and parody.

Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ivonne Pamela Landázuri
ilanbe@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press