The Lost Tradition

...after your death
you were better have a bad epitaph
than their ill report while you live
(Hamlet to Polonius)

In the year 1981 "Operation Ubú" was received as an exceptional phenomenon within the moderate panorama of theatre at that time. It's quite possible that the ingredients of direct political satire, such as implacable sarcasm towards the megalomania of our superiors, incited the adverse opinions of those who thought that the young democracy and flourishing nationalism shouldn't be farcical. 15 years later this exception continues to hold, and not only within the socio-political field, our stages have completely lost all trace of parody, satire, and comedy based on a real, close and contemporary power. It's surprising how such an essential act of hygiene has disappeared in the course of the history of theatre except for on our stage, today dedicated essentially to bland humour, musicals and metaphysics.
The past is full of conflicts between comedians and distinct powers. It's obvious that the consequences of making kings, presidents, bishops or generals uncomfortable, were substantially more serious then than now. Therefore, more complex reasons have to be found to justify the extinction of an unarguably cathartic genre for the public. The elevated costs of present day productions, so far from the simple days of the farandula (a group of travelling actors)-, could be one of the reasons for not making the administration or a hypothetical sector of the public uncomfortable, that would be looking for more risks than necessary, exposing oneself to catastrophic ruin, which today would be a real failure. I refer here exclusively to private theatre, as institutional theatre obviously doesn't merit mentioning in terms of freedom of expression. The perverse protection of the public administration has something precisely to do with the loss of this genre. This " Ubú President" is a reformulation of "Operació Ubú" first shown at the Theatre Lliure. The changes are a product of the passing of time, but most of all because Ubú Excels invades our privacy daily, recriminating, advising, threatening, moralising and laying down the law to a whole country. In a word explaining even how we Catalans have to urinate.

But no one should trust this. The 'Supreme' are everywhere. They aren't exclusively from any one country. For Alfred Jarry, creator of the character in 1896, Ubú was his own master. The closest and most restraining power is usually the most oppressive, for this reason it's vital to protect oneself with the liberating tradition of humour, satire and sarcasm in order to compensate for the arrogance of the powerful. If "Ubú President" manages to fulfil this therapeutic function we will gladly accept the consequences. With this same satisfaction we have been able to make people laugh for 34 years about generals, dictators, bishops, presidents and all class of nuisances in general who haven't managed to spoil our fun.

Albert Boadella

CAST AND PRODUCTION LIST

Actors

	Ramon Fontserè		Pilar Sáenz
	Ramon Llimós		Minnie Marx
	Josep M. Fontserè		Xevi Vilà
	Jesus Agelet		Begoña Alberdi
	Àssun Planas		Lluís Elias