Past Present Future
Past Present Future
David Runciman
The History of Revolutionary Ideas: Ubu Roi w/Dominic Dromgoole
45 minutes Posted Apr 15, 2025 at 5:00 am.
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Show notes

Today’s Parisian revolution is a theatrical performance that produced a riot. David talks to theatre director Dominic Dromgoole about Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1896), which only ran for a couple of nights but left an indelible mark on the culture of the age and has resonated ever since. Why did a play effectively written by children provoke such a storm among the adults? What made it it blow the mind of W. B. Yeats who was in the audience? How can something so bad be so liberating?

Next time: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring

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