Quotes
"In Ubu, Ma and Pa Ubu sail away in a boat. The boat is one of my favourite props ever. It's two flat bits of cardboard on two poles that are folded around Ma and Pa and it just looks like the flat side of a boat. There's then a moment where Ubu breaks out of the boat, and the sides of the boat become wings. She's suddenly got two massive cardboard wings. The wings are created from the boat. So there's no puppet, but the puppetry in that moment is absolutely brilliant. One minute you've got a very simple, cut out cardboard boat, and the next minute, there are wings and that boat has taken you to the clouds."
"One of the things I’m most pleased about with our show is that I think we’ve done the original play really well. Alfred Jarry was our spiritual guide. His ground-breaking and highly controversial notions of theatre in his lifetime are absolutely how we think about making theatre with Kneehigh. He hated “realistic” painted backdrops – tropes of the naturalistic style at the time. When he wrote that Ubu enters riding a horse, he says either come in on a REAL horse or, even better, a cardboard one. Cardboard became our lead aesthetic for this show. Throwaway. Hand-made. Cheap. Punky. So on a level, I feel we’ve collaborated well with him and hopefully done his work justice.
I hope there’s something therapeutic about seeing this show. Singing together in protest. Laughing at the buffoon. Weeping for the world. The play is also mad. Absurd. Characters burst into Brittany Spears songs. They have strange dreams. There’s a bear!"
