Month: May 2001
Alfred Jarry: Absinthe, Bicycles and Merdre
'Merdre' - Pere Ubu, Ubu Roi And so Pere Ubu issued the very word that the finally threw the audience at the Theatre de l'Oeuvre into a frothing frenzy, during the 1896 staging of Alfred Jarry's (1873-1907) infamous Ubu Roi. The Parisians didn't take well to the absurd affront delivered upon them by the bold 23 year-old playwright. This broadside of "Shite!" successfully outraged the bourgeois, and shot Jarry to strange stardom aboard a wave of scandal. Jarry's influence has been considerable. While he himself owes much to Rabelais, movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Expressionism Cubism, Theatre of the Absurd - all owe debts to his works. Picasso, Flann O'Brien, The Marx Brothers, the Goons, Mad magazine, Robert Anton Wilson, Monty Python and their spawn were all influenced by Jarry, whether they knew it or not . . . The Ubu plays came as a cultural shock to the...
The Confabulous Mind – An investigator of the paranormal searches out human memory
Originally published by SIGNUM Ed: Do you own a video camera? Renee: No. Fred hates them. Fred: I like to remember things my own way. Ed: What do you mean by that? Fred: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened. -*Lost Highway* A few years ago, while having dinner with a friend in my Dublin city centre apartment, I witnessed what I perceived to be an outrageously serious crime. Hearing activity outside my second story window, I looked out to see four Garda (police) officers running towards my building, their car parked askew, doors open. They split into two pairs, a duo disappearing up a side street, while the others continued towards my window, below which stood a man, dressed in a jogging suit and cap. He did not put up any resistance as he was handcuffed and led towards the car. They were about halfway there...