by Alfred Jarry
adaptation and direction: Roberto Latini
with: Roberto Latini and Paolo Pasteris
music and assistance to the director: Gianluca Misiti
interactive digital environment: Andrea Brogi
motion capture assistant: Paolo Pasteris
lighting and technical direction: Max Mugnai
stage direction: Dario Palombo
video in croma key: Pierpaolo Magnani
organisation: Esmeralda Villalobos




with the support of Armunia; CSS - teatro stabile d'innovazione; FLORIAN - teatro stabile d'innovazione - in collaboration with: Art Mama Factory; Blue Cheese Project; Ass. Cult. Dn@; Xlab - Digital Factory

We approached Jarry's text by considering it as just one component of our project. The text and author are not simply put on stage but participate in the performance. Ubu incatenato seemed to us to be a hymn to freedom achieved through the mythologisation of slavery. Coming after Ubu re, this episode can be seen as the philosophical-political manifesto of Jarry's marionettes. Within an artificial world caught between extremism and paradox, parallel, other, double, triple, different... they reflect on the nature of the spirit, of things, and relationships. Freedom and Slavery live together in a single concept.
The principal issues are identity, viewpoint and roles. We were drawn towards these questions by the relationships, ownership and dependence between the author and his character, between the actor and his being a character, not to become, not to act, but to express himself in a way that is not alien to this world, but springs directly from it.
We have searched for a way of being both Ubu and Jarry at the same time; not only marionette and puppeteer; not only the puppet and the hand animating it; but also the author in front of the versions of himself that become his works. What interests us is the creative process not the finished work. The process is the end not the means. We therefore experimented with various techniques and finally arrived at the use of virtual reality. Thanks to a motion capture technique, the chaining of Ubu also becomes technological. This allowed us to arrive at the reflection that moves, conditions and orientates this performance: "the more that technology chains the actor on the stage, the more the corresponding virtual character is freed". [...] In this piece, the real actor and his virtual product are visible and together. Simultaneous surprises. As though one is reached from the other, manifesting the same consciousness.
Roberto Latini