Index

 

UBU TRUMP
or
How 19th-century French literature predicted Donald Trump’s retro-autocratic futurism

A tragi-comic play by Rainer Ganahl, after Alfred Jarry


@Stadium, Berlin @ Spike /KV Ivonne Lambert, Berlin


BERLIN VERSION - SPIKE MAGAZINE / STADIUM . YOUTUBE... YOUTUBE. 2018

INTERVIEW LINDA NORDEN - RAINER GANAHL

New York Version In Halrem morgue

INTERVIEW LINDA NORDEN - RAINER GANAHL

UBU TRUMP,
or
How 19th-century French literature predicted Donald Trump’s retro-autocratic futurism

STARRING
Tom Harrison
L anna Leite
Rainer Ganahl

JANAUR 27, 2018
@ SPIKE MAGAZINE BERLIN TOGETHER WITH STATIUM BERLIN

 

UBU TRUMP

Alfred Jarry first presented his absurdist, expletive-filled play King Ubu in Paris in 1896, and instantly ignited a literary scandal.

King Ubu not only influenced artistic movements such as Dada, Surrealism, and the Absurd Theater of Jean Genet and Samuel

Beckett, but it anticipated, with frightening perspicacity, the catastrophic political madness of the 21st century.

Written in a rudimentary and comically nonsensical way—it even incorporates some of Jarry’s high-school stunts—the play

lends itself to updating with contemporary slang and subjects. About 10 years ago, Rainer Ganahl rewrote Jarry’s text as Ubu

Lenin, with Vladimir Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya as the protagonists. Now, the advent of Donald Trump has

presented an even more appropriately divisive, madcap, narcissistic stand-in for King Ubu.

Ganahl's Ubu Trump will take place in Harlem, a neighborhood filled with many of the very people Trump supporters would

like to see deported, banned, or put behind “big, beautiful walls.” Just like Jarry’s King Ubu, Trump and his cronies run their

administration like a mafia family business, with barely fig-leafed personal enrichment schemes layered upon corrupt policies

and, in all likelihood, treason. In Ubu Trump, the father, King Ubu, has been replaced with Ubu Trump, while Mama Ubu is

reincarnated as Ubu Ivanka. Originally set in Poland and Russia, the new play blends Warsaw with Washington, and Poland

with the USA, alluding to Trump's special dealings with Putin and the new right-wing government in Poland.

The actors perform behind three simple graphic panels based on Jarry's own sketches of King Ubu, and overlapped with

renderings of the ruling Trump family: Donald, Ivanka, Jared, and their Russian guest, Putin.

This theatrical performance will be staged at a morgue in Harlem, the neighborhood where Ganahl has been living for more

than 20 years.

 

the atual play:

see PDF of actula text.

 

 

he actual play:

see PDF of actula text.

see more drawings

 

the publication is on the way - TO THE BOOKSHOP NEAR YOU

 

extra drawings..

11X14 INCH

11X14 INCH

11X14 INCH

11x14"

 

 

19 X 24 INCH

19x 24 inch

19x 24 inch