UNIT 9- King Ubu
Unit 9- King Ubu Play 24/05/2019
Context
We have been Introduced to the play Ubu which is a play parodied from the Scottish-Shakespearean play Macbeth although there are some references to Hamlet and King Lear. This can be seen especially when Billikins plots to kill Pa Ubu for revenge on killing his father.
The play was originally published in French by Alfred Jarry but was later translated to English by Kenneth McLeish.
It was first performed in France in the Théâtre de l'Œuvre on December 10, 1896.
The behavior that is used in this piece could be considered as comical, childish, bizarre, etc. especially the main character Pa Ubu who is self-obsessed, bigoted and at times very silly with his humour.
Modernism: It was apparent that these sort of plays was considered as modern literature in the 20th century.
The play was originally published in French by Alfred Jarry but was later translated to English by Kenneth McLeish.
It was first performed in France in the Théâtre de l'Œuvre on December 10, 1896.
The behavior that is used in this piece could be considered as comical, childish, bizarre, etc. especially the main character Pa Ubu who is self-obsessed, bigoted and at times very silly with his humour.
Modernism: It was apparent that these sort of plays was considered as modern literature in the 20th century.
It's been shown to us with the intention of us performing it in front
of a live audience.
of a live audience.
It's much more important than our other performances and units because it's the last Unit and it determines a large part of our grade.
For this Unit, we were also given production roles which will play a big part in what we get for this unit. My role especially was to work on marketing and production which will mean that I and this other person have to make sure that people take notice of the play that I will be performing in.
The roles that I have been given for the play is Tsar Alexis, Soldier, Banker and one of Bilikin's henchmen.
Tsar Alexis: Is a Russian war-lord who is one of Pa Ubu's enemies. He is introduced as an arrogant royal later on in the play where he meets Dogpile who he later teams up with to overthrow Pa Ubu of the throne. Considering how his title is Russian I assumed that the character would be portrayed with a Russian accent.
The rest of my characters have minor roles in the play.
The roles that I have been given for the play is Tsar Alexis, Soldier, Banker and one of Bilikin's henchmen.
Tsar Alexis: Is a Russian war-lord who is one of Pa Ubu's enemies. He is introduced as an arrogant royal later on in the play where he meets Dogpile who he later teams up with to overthrow Pa Ubu of the throne. Considering how his title is Russian I assumed that the character would be portrayed with a Russian accent.
The rest of my characters have minor roles in the play.
The soldier: I actually appear as the soldier in many scenes but I don't have that much to say, however majority of the time I share a dialogue with other characters. Which means that the soldier is part of a crowd especially in the scene where Pa Ubu is discussing his plan in the dining hall.
While the banker and Bilikin's henchman feature only in one scene while the banker says about five lines the latter is involved in a fight at the end of the play.
Research
There are many themes to this play such as Satire which is a political type of comedy and we learned more about this when we searched it up in Google. As a class, we watched The Tracy Ullman show which is presented by the BBC and has inspired the creation of the much-loved American TV show "The Simpsons."
The first thing we notice about the play is that the dialogue is very different from what we have done before in other plays that we have previously done before.
Although many of my peers weren't familiar with the vocabulary, I
wasn't a foreigner to the language that was being used in the script because when I was younger I used to watch movies where strange accents with British/Anglo origin have been used.
Although many of my peers weren't familiar with the vocabulary, I
wasn't a foreigner to the language that was being used in the script because when I was younger I used to watch movies where strange accents with British/Anglo origin have been used.
we have done read-throughs on the script.
Dictators: To understand Pa Ubu in a much more realistic way, we looked up past and present dictators in the real world as well as other sorts of head of authorities who are power hungry. This Includes Kim Jong-Un, Trump, Hitler, Mussolini and many more, They rule or ruled North Korea, USA, Germany and Italy respectively.
The reason we were set the task of looking for dictators/leaders was that many of these dictators/leaders had the same traits and qualities as Pa Ubu which will help us all to understand what type of personality Pa Ubu has.
Watched the theatre version of the play: Our teacher sent us a link of a live action play of King Ubu on youtube and it was good for us to have a perspective of what the play would look like or how has it been performed previously. The words in the play weren't said exactly the same way as it said from the script from where I was reading it from. I felt that the movement that was used in the video was over-exaggerated and unlike my group the adaption that I saw was faithful to the original content when it came to the costume of Pa Ubu.
Modernism:
Planning
There were many sessions where we had rehearsals which had to be perfected especially when it came to the part in which people had to do the directions of the play.
Few positions need to be perfected especially when we are heading into a new act in the script.
The director of our play suggested that for the scenes in which there are a king and soldiers.
The soldiers should stand behind the king who is in front of them just in the middle.
The length of the play: According to our teacher the performance is supposed to be approximately 45 mins and during the rehearsal, our teacher who acts as our director also decided to cut a few of the lines the following being Act 3 scene 1, 3 and 4. While a part of a few scenes was cut such as the majority of Act 2 Scene 5 which meant that only a little bit of the top was left. Act 3 Scene 1 was originally cut but it returned because there were parts that were integral to the storyline of the play.
Big cartoon practice: Because these characters are well known for being wacky and comical, we were all assigned with finding a space in the hall that we used for exercises and all sorts of physical actions. Later on we had to learn how to make our gestures and movements quite large for e.g. if Sheenagh our teacher asked us to do something such as pretend to be a crap then we would have to make sure that she could visualise as possible, we can do this stretching our legs far wide and having our hands open up in the air up high. The purpose of this exercise was to help us get into any character we end up receiving in the near future whether it's for a performance or just a simple exercise.
Stanislavsky Method
This play was very different from what we've done before because instead of using the Stanislavsky method we actually used an Outside Out technique to prepare for our roles.
Even when there were scenes when people died and bad things happened the behaviour of the characters was still comedic or over-exaggerated. For e.g. In the scene where the high authorities died Pa Ubu still managed to make the scenes lighthearted, another thing that helped set the mood was the sound effects that were used when the deaths happened.
Marketing and Publicity- Production
In the production side of the play, I and Tallulah have to do marketing and publicity.
We thought that it would be good if we texted everyone we knew in social media so that we can spread the word.
We are going to be selling the tickets so it would be good if we could invite as many people as we can to maximise the profit for when the props were brought by the production class.
We also decided that the best thing to do was to do a poster in our own free time and then compare it to each other. I think that we could also combine each of our ideas.
Since no one else is assigned to tickets or even taking the initiative of doing that part of that task so I and Tallulah suggested that we should do something about the tickets.
We are currently thinking of doing our marketing work on the computer and publicity on social media mainly on snapchat and Instagram which are two social media sites that are used mostly.
Problem-solving
With the positions- With many of the scenes many people didn't know what to do while another character that was on the same set with them was speaking. So for e.g., The actors that portrayed the soldiers were asked to mime filling their guns with bullets while they were having orders handed to them by Pa Ubu who's the main character of the play so that they can be more productive with their roles.
Improvising to the play.
Although we practice many times there are still people who still haven't learnt their lines off by heart especially the people who only have a few lines to learn. The only thing that we can do as a class is improvise and make sure that what is said makes any sense to the storyline of the script.
The marketing and publicity- Because of other priorities we weren't able to do the tasks that we set for ourselves as quickly as we could so what I and my partner decided to do was to do our posters, ticket design, info, etc at a certain time and do each of our own different of the tasks at the same time and compare each one of our own work.
Doing the first poster for Ubu: I finally started on my first poster to advertise to the rest of the college. It was inspired by one of the original posters that was made for Ubu Roi which is the name of King Ubu but in French.
The poster that I adapted my re-creation on, had a red background and a picture of King Ubu made by shapes in the colour white.
My Version 1st poster: Is kind off the same as the original but with the important details of the play on the left-side of the poster such as the date, location, etc.
I've decided to have a red background just like the original but instead the poster saying "Ubu Roi", The heading of my poster say's King Ubu horizontally rather than diagonally.
The reason why I was inspired by this poster was because to me it tells me what the play is about and the poster isn't to mixed or to bland either.
Cutting the Lines of the script
The majority of the members of the people in our class have trouble remembering their lines especially me. It's that bad that in the coming weeks of our performance we were still reading from our scripts even in rehearsals when we should be off-script by now.
Since the script is long and the play is supposed to be at least 45 minutes at a minimum. A lot of the lines are long and some monologues are unnecessary to the plot of the story line.
So it seems rational to cut-off a few lines and scenes of the script that way the actors of our group don't have a load of lines to memorise and making the plot and dialogue more realistic.
It was also useful to get rid of a few scenes so that we can make the play shorter.
Rob's arrival- Since our main teacher has been gone many things have gone wrong. The speed of our class has decreased which is something that I don't mind because I'm the type of that person that struggles to keep up with the pace of the teachers. But his replacement needs to improve on the amount of time she spends on a matter e.g when it comes to giving a role.
Planning
Few positions need to be perfected especially when we are heading into a new act in the script.
The director of our play suggested that for the scenes in which there are a king and soldiers.
The soldiers should stand behind the king who is in front of them just in the middle.
The length of the play: According to our teacher the performance is supposed to be approximately 45 mins and during the rehearsal, our teacher who acts as our director also decided to cut a few of the lines the following being Act 3 scene 1, 3 and 4. While a part of a few scenes was cut such as the majority of Act 2 Scene 5 which meant that only a little bit of the top was left. Act 3 Scene 1 was originally cut but it returned because there were parts that were integral to the storyline of the play.
Big cartoon practice: Because these characters are well known for being wacky and comical, we were all assigned with finding a space in the hall that we used for exercises and all sorts of physical actions. Later on we had to learn how to make our gestures and movements quite large for e.g. if Sheenagh our teacher asked us to do something such as pretend to be a crap then we would have to make sure that she could visualise as possible, we can do this stretching our legs far wide and having our hands open up in the air up high. The purpose of this exercise was to help us get into any character we end up receiving in the near future whether it's for a performance or just a simple exercise.
Stanislavsky Method
This play was very different from what we've done before because instead of using the Stanislavsky method we actually used an Outside Out technique to prepare for our roles.
Even when there were scenes when people died and bad things happened the behaviour of the characters was still comedic or over-exaggerated. For e.g. In the scene where the high authorities died Pa Ubu still managed to make the scenes lighthearted, another thing that helped set the mood was the sound effects that were used when the deaths happened.
Marketing and Publicity- Production
In the production side of the play, I and Tallulah have to do marketing and publicity.
We thought that it would be good if we texted everyone we knew in social media so that we can spread the word.
We are going to be selling the tickets so it would be good if we could invite as many people as we can to maximise the profit for when the props were brought by the production class.
We also decided that the best thing to do was to do a poster in our own free time and then compare it to each other. I think that we could also combine each of our ideas.
Since no one else is assigned to tickets or even taking the initiative of doing that part of that task so I and Tallulah suggested that we should do something about the tickets.
We are currently thinking of doing our marketing work on the computer and publicity on social media mainly on snapchat and Instagram which are two social media sites that are used mostly.
Problem-solving
With the positions- With many of the scenes many people didn't know what to do while another character that was on the same set with them was speaking. So for e.g., The actors that portrayed the soldiers were asked to mime filling their guns with bullets while they were having orders handed to them by Pa Ubu who's the main character of the play so that they can be more productive with their roles.
Improvising to the play.
Although we practice many times there are still people who still haven't learnt their lines off by heart especially the people who only have a few lines to learn. The only thing that we can do as a class is improvise and make sure that what is said makes any sense to the storyline of the script.
The marketing and publicity- Because of other priorities we weren't able to do the tasks that we set for ourselves as quickly as we could so what I and my partner decided to do was to do our posters, ticket design, info, etc at a certain time and do each of our own different of the tasks at the same time and compare each one of our own work.
Doing the first poster for Ubu: I finally started on my first poster to advertise to the rest of the college. It was inspired by one of the original posters that was made for Ubu Roi which is the name of King Ubu but in French.
The poster that I adapted my re-creation on, had a red background and a picture of King Ubu made by shapes in the colour white.
My Version 1st poster: Is kind off the same as the original but with the important details of the play on the left-side of the poster such as the date, location, etc.
I've decided to have a red background just like the original but instead the poster saying "Ubu Roi", The heading of my poster say's King Ubu horizontally rather than diagonally.
The reason why I was inspired by this poster was because to me it tells me what the play is about and the poster isn't to mixed or to bland either.
My version The second poster: I decided to make two just in case the first poster did meet the requirements of the production role. Just like the first poster I researched other types of posters but I didn't exactly find a poster to focus on entirely, however, I did look at a set of posters and decided to take a few ideas from each poster and add it unto my own. I picked peach for my background because I thought it would go well with whatever font I end up choosing. The colours of the writing and boxes were used because they represent the genre and the emotions of the play.
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| This is the original poster of Ubu that I got inspired by. |
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| This is the first poster that I created. This poster was pinned on the wall with our pictures. |
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| This poster took less time to make than my first poster. This poster was shown on the door of the entrance of the theatre. |
Cutting the Lines of the script
Since the script is long and the play is supposed to be at least 45 minutes at a minimum. A lot of the lines are long and some monologues are unnecessary to the plot of the story line.
So it seems rational to cut-off a few lines and scenes of the script that way the actors of our group don't have a load of lines to memorise and making the plot and dialogue more realistic.
It was also useful to get rid of a few scenes so that we can make the play shorter.
Rob's arrival- Since our main teacher has been gone many things have gone wrong. The speed of our class has decreased which is something that I don't mind because I'm the type of that person that struggles to keep up with the pace of the teachers. But his replacement needs to improve on the amount of time she spends on a matter e.g when it comes to giving a role.
Uncompleted failed rehearsals
For a long time we have been working on the play "King UBU" and despite our many rehearsals it still took us all a long time to block the whole script in a school day.
There have been many distractions and there have been many classmates who have brought the morale down by complaining the whole time, not putting in effort all whilst in the rehearsal. What I haven't liked is that I haven't been able to step up to keep the peace among the group.
There have been many distractions and there have been many classmates who have brought the morale down by complaining the whole time, not putting in effort all whilst in the rehearsal. What I haven't liked is that I haven't been able to step up to keep the peace among the group.
The day that we all waited for was finally here and prior to the performance especially during the last few weeks we have rehearsed for many hours. We had to block many scenes repetitively because there was still people who either didn't know their lines, the positions that they're supposed to be in or when to get ready for their scene.
Sheenagh didn't let people go for lunch the whole play was blocked properly. There were many delays when starting since many people were speaking loudly backstage and people were taking long to come out.
I picked all my props the day before but unfortunately have stolen a few of the items to my demise.
From what I can remember the items that was stolen was a sword and a crown.
The other items that I picked for each character was a moustache, sword, crown, map and a kazoo all for Tsar Alexis my main character and the most important one.
Others items including is a gun and a tie to come along with it.The items that weren't ordered- (Problem Solving)
The people that's in charge of the props and costumes gave Nazia (Who orders the items that are needed.) a piece of paper with the list of props and costumes that were necessary for us to make the play more realistic and for us to relate more to our additional characters that we all been cast as.
However, it didn't turn out that way since Nazia didn't end up ordering the items that we needed which I don't know the reason of.
Luckily there were still props from previous years that was suitable for us to use but at the same time we were still lacking in the amount we needed, we could share but at the end of the day during when we do need a few specific props there is a chance we may not end up finding the person who has it in time for our scene.
Costumes:
I was very worried because I thought that I wouldn't be able to get changed in time for my scenes where I'm a different character.
There is a chance where that might not be the case since I only have to change into a different jacket for the majority of my scenes.
The following costumes for each character are read below...
Tsar Alexis: Red cape, Royal Uniform and badges.
Soldier: Camo jacket
Banker: A hat and a suit jacket
Most of these items I found was in the costume department the rest I was able to get from my house such as the red cape
During the performance:I think I was limited in this aspect because as I have written before I had to share my clothes with other people and even when I had the clothes first still had to rely on other people to give me costume that I needed in the time that it was my scene. I think the part of my costume that failed me has to be the moustache in my face which wasn't sticking in my face and in the scene in where Tsar Alexis appears for the first time I could feel that my moustache was falling off and I had to still be in character and to achieve that I stroked my fingers below my face while putting a thinking pose at the same time.
Directions:
The directions that were used were very useful for me and to my peers. This was heavily reminded of during rehearsals because it shows to the audience that we are still in character.
One thing that played a big part in the directions was knowing which part of the stage to come out from.
During the performance: One thing that played a big part in helping us know when to come on was the list of characters in their scene. This really helped me because I was able to prepare myself for my upcoming scenes. I had to run across the hall backstage so that I can be ready for the scenes that are between each other. E.g. of this is when I was in Act 2, Scene 2 and Act 2, Scene 4 where I had the same but I had to come to different areas of the stage.
- There were moments when I was actually performing and I made a few mistakes or things that I felt that I could do differently especially when I appeared on stage for the first time in front of an audience.
- In the parts where I was a soldier I had to say things at the same time as other people, I forgot my lines but I still managed to stay in character throughout the whole scene. I think that
- Even with Tsar Alexis there were parts in which I wasn't continuing the same way I was supposed. This was evident when my moustache kept on falling off and my small red cape kept on falling and wasn't neat because I was in a rush to be in time for my moment to shine. One thing that I'm going to remember is to have my script directly next to me to prepare for the worst and read the lines of other characters.
Lighting:
Sheenagh kept the lights at a minimum only using yellow and blue mainly especially for the battle and the praying scenes.
I tried to contribute by saying to Sheenagh to use red for the church scene because when you go to a church the colour that is mostly seen is red but Sheenagh didn't take my advice.
Sounds: The sort of sound effects that were used for the King Ubu play were sounds of things falling down like a missile for the scene where cannonballs fall down. This was a good addition to the performance because it gave the audience a perspective of what was going on; therefore, they can enjoy the play much better.
Evaluation
I haven't been able to remember everything that has been said to me throughout these last few weeks but I do know that there has been a fair share of controversy whilst we have been studying this play.
This has mainly happened in the week in which the performance happened and the week prior also.
A lot of of what we have done has been in the last minute even with the collection of the props and the costumes. We were also very limited with what we can have. At one point we had insufficient props and that showed when we were actually doing our show, when I and a few others had to keep on lending props to other peers. This caused stress because at times it delayed our time of preparation.
But at the end of the day the music and the lighting turned out to be pretty fruitful and more entertaining not only for the audience but for the actors themselves.
The costumes helped us to relate more with our characters and also gave our characters the chance to be a part of us.
Even when the props and costumes weren't ordered were still able to make use out of what was already in the hall backstage.
Even with many people missing many rehearsal lessons we still managed to make the play a success despite the fact if we were performing under a production company then it would probably be cancelled ages ago and investors may have been very angry.
I myself just tried to work as hard as I can and to try to understand what my role is and how they behave. For e.g. Tsar Alexis is described as someone who is a threat so I tried to show that by using angry facial expressions and walking like if I was a ruler by walking upright with my head held high.
As soon as I learnt my lines I wrote down all the actions and everything else that happens in my scenes yet one thing that I wasn't able to understand completely was the places that the characters were in unless it said the place on top. In the actual performance I made a mistake when it came to exiting for my role as a soldier but I don't think it will matter because the audience or the cameramen may have not been focusing on me.
I think that places where I really excelled at was my articulation, my voice projection and my ability to do accents. With this course I have been able to see if acting is the right career path for me and it seems that with the knowledge that I have taken with me throughout this year I can say that it's much more pure than what people say it is.
- Blocking: This isn't actually a skill that I learnt but it's an example of the vocabulary that I learnt in Performing Arts. Which another word for rehearsal but for certain scenes.
- Articulation: Is when you're able to speak coherently.
- Cheating: Is when you're on stage and you stand in specific position so that people in each side of the audience can see your front rather than your back.
Overall I enjoyed doing King Ubu it was very different and reminded of a story that I wrote in year 8. It was exactly written the same way but it was much more crude.
I do hope that I can do a play like this again in the future.
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