Past Productions: The Ubu of Three Masters

Although theater is full of dynamic duos (Brecht and Weill, Rodgers and Hart, Wilson and Glass, and so on), lively and successful creative trios are comparatively rare. The collaboration of director/adaptor Andrei Belgrader, adaptor Shelley Berc, and composer/lyricist Rusty Magee is, happily, one of the exceptions. All three will return to the American Repertory Theater this spring to collaborate on Ubu Rock, their raucous musical adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s wildly funny and thoroughly vulgar Ubu Roi.

Ubu Rock will be the second project developed at the A.R.T. by Belgrader, Berc, and Magee. The first, a musical adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters, premiered at the A.R.T. in 1992. Their collaborations have proved so successful that the three recently received a $200,000 grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation to develop a musical adaptation of Carlo Gozzi’s The King Stag at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

Belgrader and Berc had known each other for nearly ten years before their first collaboration — an adaptation of Denis Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, which premiered at New York’s Classic Stage Company in 1988 and was featured in the A.R.T.’s Fall Festival four years ago. Their style of collaboration is not the typical one in which the translator/adaptor works on a text and then passes it to the director. “We work together from the beginning, so we both look at the text,” says Belgrader. “Shelley’s strength is in the language; my strength is in structuring. Which doesn’t mean that Shelley doesn’t have a say in structuring or I don’t have a say in language. We work really closely together.”

This process of adaptation based on complementary strengths continues in rehearsal. “We dream and we argue and we have to give up ideas and accept new ideas,” says Berc. “My strength is language, but I’m working with Andrei, who is very interested in the visual and social.”

After Rameau’s Nephew, Belgrader and Berc adapted Molière’s Scapin at the Yale Repertory Theatre. This was their first musical adaptation together, and the first time Rusty Magee joined the team, though he had worked with Belgrader previously. “I’ve known Rusty for a long time and I admire him greatly. I love his music. We had worked together on different projects. We did As You Like It. But the work on Scapin was really substantial, and he joined as an author. He’s great with lyrics. He writes a song, and then adjusts it once he knows the actor who is going to sing it.”

Because the threesome creates each project together, they are not confined by rigid creativity-restricting roles. “Working with a team, the ideas change with the energy,” says Berc. Magee adds, “It’s really hard to work when we’re not together.”

Getting together, however, can be tough. In March, one month before rehearsals of Ubu Rock will begin, Belgrader is in Los Angeles, Magee is in New York, and Berc is in Iowa City, where she is Associate Professor of Playwrighting at the University of Iowa. Belgrader relates some of their pre-rehearsal machinations: ‘It’s very complex. We try to get together. Shelley and I have already, and Rusty came, too, for a couple of days. Shelley and I worked on the script in Europe, actually, and Rusty’s coming to L.A. for awhile. We do a little over the telephone, but mainly we meet in person.”

Pre-rehearsal meetings are only a small part of a larger process, as Magee explains: ‘You always come into rehearsal with something. With Ubu we have more to hang our hats on, but these are ever-evolving texts. You’re never sure what kind of incarnation they will take. Andrei says, ‘Sure, we can have a chorus of twenty.’ We start with fun, grandiose ideas, and then see what we can get.”

Belgrader agrees. “We are open always to suggestions from actors, too, so there’s yet another stage in the transformation. Because all three of us are there in rehearsal, we can be very flexible and open. When something of value comes, we grab it. Of course, we have times when we clash, but that’s part of it. Actually, that’s very good.”

Belgrader believes the time is right for a musical adaptation of Ubu Roi. “There’s a lot of Ubu going on right now around us.” Berc elaborates: “I think it’s a play about violence. Violence of language is certainly part of that, but it’s also about the violence of murder, of the appropriation of property, of violence between the sexes. I mean, men and women hate each other in this play, and we’re certainly going to explore that. It’s about power.” Though it will draw on contemporary issues, Ubu Rock will go beyond contemporary political satire. Berc continues, “We’re approaching this play as a parable. You should never quite know whether this is a kingdom in Poland or the bowels of the United States. We will have a few specific words and phrases, but they will be carefully chosen.”

“A lot of the satire will be in the songs and the lyrics,” says Belgrader. “The music will serve the substance of the play. Certainly one of the kicks I have with it is the rock-and-roll songs. There’s a certain wildness to rock-and-roll that’s missing from theater. That’s why there are big concerts with lots of people going to see them. There’s some basic excitement that doesn’t happen with an audience in theater.”

With that excitement in mind, Belgrader notes, “I would love to have more young people than usually come to the theater see Ubu Rock. There is something exciting that is specific to theater that you cannot find in film and T.V., and that’s what we want people to come for. It’s what’s live that’s exciting.”

Belgrader sees Ubu Rock as a way of tapping this enthusiasm. “I find theater very boring nowadays. And I think one of the kicks I get from doing Ubu Rock is that it really is outrageous in form. Theater has become a low-key experience. A lot of people go to the theater to get some kind of cultural diet, and not really to be affected.”

When Ubu Roi premiered in 1896, it set off an audience riot. When asked whether he thinks it is still possible to shock an audience in 1995, Belgrader responds confidently: “Oh yes, definitely. It’s going to take a little work, but we’ll be offensive. It’s not easy. It truly isn’t easy, but we’re doing our best.”

Heather Lindsley is a graduate of the dramaturgy program at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University.