UBUmaterial Live: Mme Ubu in Paris – a memoir

Artists: PAPALANGKI Theatre Company

Location: Thessaloniki, Greece

Date: Monday, April 5th, 19:30 pm - 20:30 pm Greece Time | 12:30 pm EDT | 09:30 am PDT | 18:30 pm CEST | 21:00 pm IRST

Event Access: Instagram

UBUmaterial is an Instagram performative archive (in progress). Three performers/actors-narrators, isolated due to COVID-19’s lockdown, explore Alfred Jarry’s play ‘UBU Roi’ at home. UBUmaterial is published in "episodes", sometimes it broadcasts live, and it seeks interaction with the audience. The order of the videos is not important. Nor the frequency of uploads. We build UBUmaterial with and for the audience, bit by bit.

In 'UBUmaterial Live: Mme Ubu in Paris – a memoir' we invite audiences to participate and question the characters and their stories. The original play ends with the UBU couple escaping to Paris. Instead, this live Instagram event will examine what happened after they escaped. Some years later, Mme Ubu looks at her ‘archive’ and recalls what she went through and what she lost. She sings Greek songs about emigration with help from her co-performers and answers audiences’ questions. Here, the ‘reality’ of Jarry’s play is mixed with the ‘fictional’ world of the performative archive and vice versa. The performative archive uses the play as a material to build a ‘parallel’ reality inspired by the performer’s own memories, opening a window of multiple reflections and shifts between dramaturgy (character-play) and performance (performer-archive). 'UBUmaterial Live: Mme Ubu in Paris – a memoir' will launch a self-reflexive process of new possible reinterpretation and repurposement of the performative archive (UBUmaterial) itself.

Notes: Follow UBUmaterial on Instagram to receive notifications about the Live event and to explore the archive before the performance.

Credits:

Directors: Tasos Angelopoulos & Yannis Didaskalou. 

Performers: Liana Taousiani, Dimitris Kapetanios & Dimitris Lolis. 

Dramaturg: Panagiota Konstantinakou. 

Digital Media Dramaturg: Christina Papagiannouli. 

Stage & costume coordination: Matina Megla. 

Graphics & Subtitles: Christos Tsavlidis, (Original play translation: Zoe Samara).

Language: English