Classical Theatre Company Presents UBU ROI by Alfred Jarry, Beginning 1/16

The Classical Theatre Company's (CTC) second production of their 2012-2013 Main Stage Season will be Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. The production runs three weeks from January 16th- February 3rd 2013 at Studio 101- located in Spring Street Studios, 1824 Spring Street in the Heights.

Ubu Roi is an avant-garde foray into the nature of greed and power. Ubu plots with his wife and fellow conspirators to kill the King of Poland, the broad satire that proceeds to unfold shows all the wild results of that conspiracy and murder. Alfred Jarry was a groundbreaking playwright whose works pushed the bounds of decency and theatre in his day. "Ubu Roi is the funniest play about how awful humans can be to each other ever written by a misanthropic midget genius. For a play that's over a century old, it's remarkably chock full of profanity, vulgarity, and absurdity, all delivered with a deceptively easy wit," says the play's Director Philip Hays. Regarded as the earliest piece of theatre in the Theatre of the Absurd movement, Ubu Roi, and its initial productions incited riots due to its use of language and its reactionary response to Naturalism and Realism: styles of theatre that were at their height in this era. "It's simultaneously a child's puppet show and a scathing satire of mankind's potential for ignorance and mediocrity," says Hays.

If classical theatre is rarely produced in the greater Houston area then Theatre of the Absurd and Surrealism is even more scarce. Through this play we hope to expose our audience to something just a bit different than the usual theater experience. With a ten-person cast playing over thirty characters and a highly interactive set jam-packed with trap doors and hidden entrances, this play promises to entice as well as challenge the viewers' intellect asking our audience to redefine what they know of as "classical".

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