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August 03, 2015
Lincoln Center To Web-Stream Cheek By Jowl’s Celebrated Production Of Ubu Roi Presented At Lincoln Center Festival 2015
Lincoln Center Festival
Contact: Eileen McMahon
212.875.5391
LINCOLN CENTER TO WEB-STREAM CHEEK BY JOWL’S CELEBRATED PRODUCTION OF UBU ROI PRESENTED AT LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2015
Web-Stream available at LincolnCenter.org and LincolnCenterFestival.org/2015/Cheek-By-Jowl
NEW YORK, NY (August 3, 2015) — Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will web-stream Cheek by Jowl’s critically acclaimed production of Ubu Roi from this summer’s 20th season of Lincoln Center Festival, making this rarely produced play accessible to theater fans around the globe. The New York Times called this production of Ubu Roi an “inspired rethinking,” adding that “it’s impossible not to be transfixed by the raging force of its energy.” The free web-stream was recorded live on Sunday, July 26, 2015 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, and will be available from Monday, August 3 through Sunday, August 9 on LincolnCenter.org and LincolnCenterFestival.org/2015/Cheek-By-Jowl.
This web-stream reflects a growing priority for Lincoln Center, which is making more of its programming accessible beyond the walls of its concert halls and venues. As previously announced, eleven concerts from the Mostly Mozart Festival and Lincoln Center Out of Doors series will be live-streamed on LincolnCenter.org. Upcoming concerts include the August 5 and August 7 Mostly Mozart “A Little Night Music” concerts at 10 PM, Out of Doors’ We Like It Like That! A Boogaloo Celebration at 7 PM on August 6, and Out of Doors’ Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited at 7 PM on August 8. For more information about these concerts, please click here. Additional events to be streamed online this year will be announced at a later date.
Cheek by Jowl's celebrated team of director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod adapted Alfred Jarry's 1896 proto-surrealist and absurdist comedy about a scheming, murderous yet ridiculous dictator. Ubu Roi was first performed in The Hague in 2013. It has since played worldwide, including Paris, Madrid, Moscow, Venice, and London. Given that Jarry wrote the play at 23 as a prank aimed at a detested teacher, Donnellan and Ormerod chose to rekindle Jarry’s outrageous play charting the exploits of the tyrannical King by setting it as the Oedipal fantasy of a camcorder-clutching teenager taking revenge on his parents and their French bourgeoisie world. In the cream-colored dining room of an affluent French couple, an ensemble of six French actors performs Jarry’s grotesque play about the oafish Ubu, who is spurred to kill the King of Poland by his Lady Macbeth-like wife. English subtitles provide translation.
Cheek by Jowl was formed in 1981 by its co-Artistic Directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod. The company’s manifesto was to re-examine classical texts, avoiding directorial and design concepts, and focus on the actor’s art. Cheek by Jowl has established an international reputation for bringing “fresh life to the classics using intense, vivid performances like a laser of light to set the text ablaze” (The Guardian). The company performs in English, Russian, and French. In 2007 Peter Brook invited Donnellan and Ormerod to form a group of French actors to perform a French language production of Racine’s Andromaque. Many of the actors in that production are in the company’s current production of Ubu Roi.
Cheek by Jowl’s first production was William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, which was presented to acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival. Soon after the company received invitations to take its productions of Vanity Fair and Pericles to festivals in Europe and the Near East. In its first London season, 1986, Cheek by Jowl won the Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Newcomer. More than half of Cheek by Jowl’s plays received Olivier Awards. Over the past 30 years the Company has toured across five continents, creating more than 30 productions.
Writer and dramatist Alfred Jarry filled his brief 34 years on earth with enough writing and louche living to last a far longer lifetime. Jarry wrote novels, plays, poetry, essays, and speculative journalism, but he is best remembered for his plays about the Ubu legend: Ubu Cocu and Ubu Roi. Jarry’s inspiration for the plays was a short farce called Les Polonais. Jarry revised and reworked the material for the rest of his life. Jarry is also remembered for coining the term and concept of “pataphysics.” As he explained it, pataphysics is “the science of the realm beyond metaphysics . . . the science of imaginary solutions.” Both pataphysics and Ubu Roi have influenced artists and writers throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, including painters Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, as well as composer Paul McCartney, and filmmaker Tim Burton.
Co-producers: Cheek by Jowl with Barbican, London, Les Gémeaux/Sceaux/Scène Nationale and Comédie de Béthune, Centre Dramatique National Nord/Pas-de-Calais.
The Lincoln Center Festival 2015 presentation of Ubu Roi is made possible in part by generous support from The Grand Marnier Foundation and Sharp Fund PLD at The New York Community Trust.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community relations, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA offers 15 series, festivals, and programs including American Songbook, Avery Fisher Artist Program, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, Martin E. Segal Awards, Meet the Artist, Mostly Mozart Festival, and the White Light Festival, as well as the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and 11 resident organizations: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, School of American Ballet, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. For more information: aboutlincolncenter.org
Having just completed its 20th season, Lincoln Center Festival has received worldwide attention for presenting some of the broadest and most original performing arts programs in Lincoln Center’s history. The Festival has presented nearly 1,371 performances of opera, music, dance, theater, and interdisciplinary forms by internationally acclaimed artists from more than 50 countries. To date, the Festival has commissioned more than 42 new works and offered some 142 world, U.S., and New York premieres. It places particular emphasis on showcasing contemporary artistic viewpoints and multidisciplinary works that challenge the boundaries of traditional performance. lincolncenterfestival.org
Lincoln Center Festival lead support is provided by American Express.
Major support is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Lincoln Center Festival 2015 is also made possible by The Shubert Foundation, Nancy A. Marks, LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, Yang Lan, The Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, The Katzenberger Foundation, Inc., Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc., Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia, Jennie and Richard DeScherer, The Grand Marnier Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Marubeni America Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas), Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, the Goethe-Institut, Federal Foreign Office of Germany, ITOCHU International Inc., The Joelson Foundation, Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, Sharp Fund PLD at The New York Community Trust, Great Performers Circle, Chairman’s Council, and Friends of Lincoln Center.
Public support for Festival 2015 is provided the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts.
Endowment support is provided by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and Nancy Abeles Marks.
MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center.
United Airlines is a Supporter of Lincoln Center.
WABC-TV is a Supporter of Lincoln Center.
“Summer at Lincoln Center” is supported by Diet Pepsi
Time out New York is a media partner of Summer at Lincoln Center
Artist Catering provided by Zabar’s and Zabars.com.
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