Pere Ubu and The Brothers Quay: Bring Me the Head of Ubu Roi

The world’s only expressionist rock band, Pere Ubu presents the musical theatre of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry’s 1898 play from which the band is named. Often seen as the theatrical precursor to the Absurdist, Dada and Surrealist art movements, Ubu Roi shocked early audiences with its blend of grotesque absurdity, wild humour and coarse language.


Ubu Roi is a play for the mind and imagination. It is a drama of ideas and grotesqueries, and a fusion of several disparate and incongruous elements. At the heart of Jarry’s original production was the use of various performance media, and Pere Ubu’s show reflects this with the use of stop-motion animation, projections and stage design by the enigmatic Brothers Quay.

‘Jarry’s ideas resonated with feelings I had about the use of abstract, concrete and synthesised sound in the narrative architecture of rock music, all tools to engage the imagination of the listener when detailing the picture told by the music and lyrics’ (David Thomas, Pere Ubu).