Père Gynt: Mendacity for the 21st Century
The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States missed by a mere few weeks the 120th anniversary of the opening night of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu the King (10 December 1896). Numerous similarities between the 45th US president and the character that inaugu -rated the theatrical avantgarde didn’t go unnoticed. The poet Charles Simic wrote that the “story of his presidency and the cast of characters he has assembled in the White House would easily fit into Jarry’s play without a single word needing to be changed” (Simic 2017). British author Rosanna Hildyard had the same idea when she published her translation and adaptation of Jarry’s play under a tell-all title: Ubu Trump (2017). And early in 2018, Paula Vogel organized a “National UBU ROI Bake-Off” in which she invited playwrights to compose skits featuring key “ingredients” from Jarry’s play. So, on Presidents’ Day (19 February 2018) theatres across the country performed pieces that ranged from a farce about Trump and Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly and scandalously held the position of White House communications director, to a monologue by an actor playing Melania Trump, to Ubu’s funeral. More recently, in late February 2020, an advertisement from Verso Books for Hal Foster’s new book What Comes after Farce? landed in my inbox. The blurb is spot on: