Perth Festival: Ubu and the Truth Commission & The Paper Architect - review

Puppets and their peculiar magic have been a recurring theme in this year�s Perth Festival, but in Ubu and The Truth Commission puppetry becomes a vehicle to explore the human suffering many endured under Apartheid, writes Alison Croggon.

There are pictures I wish I�d never seen, stories I wish I�d never heard. Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, they slide into my mind, echoes of nightmares I hope I never have to encounter. The body of a Syrian child, returned to his parents after he was arrested by government forces, bearing the marks of horrific torture. The dismembered, charred remains of victims of El Salvadoran death squads. The accounts of South African men and women who were forced to identify the mangled remains of their children, murdered under Apartheid.

In the era of social media, images that once remained unpublished, considered too horrific for public consumption, can now be casually encountered between tweets about the weather. Often it seems that human suffering and cruelty are transformed into a kind of pornography, images to be fed to the empathy industry, which consumes and moves on. We are sorry; we are always sorry, or else we are monsters. But what good is it, being sorry?

And yet, there is the driving human need to be borne witness, for experience to be acknowledged, for attention to be paid. Art can be uniquely a place where human suffering can be restored from depersonalising headlines, where the weight of human significance can be properly measured, where we might understand more than an easy pity that costs nothing. And at its best, art can unite emotional and intellectual understanding to drive home harsh realities that we would rather evade.

Which brings me to the grotesquerie of Williams Kentridge�s 1997 production, Ubu and the Truth Commission, performed by South Africa�s Handspring Puppet Company perhaps for the final time at this year�s Perth Festival.

Ubu and the Truth Commission is a version of Alfred Jarry�s Ubu Roi, a vicious, scatological parody of the excesses of power and greed. When it opened (and closed, after one riotous performance) in Paris in 1896, it became one of the defining moments of modernism. Kentridge and writer Jane Taylor apply Jarry�s monstrous creation to the political situation of 1990s South Africa, creating a tale that if anything, resonates more darkly now than when it was made.

Using puppets designed by Adrian Kohler and projections of Kentridge�s peerless animations, the production creates three levels of reality, which interweave to create an increasing complexity. There�s Ma and Pa Ubu�s domestic rambunctiousness, performed by actors and supporting puppets; the symbolic narratives of the animations, which include savage representations of torture as well as photographs of atrocity; and the real-world narratives of witnesses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The result is astounding theatre, at once fierce in its indictment of political cynicism and a harrowing representation of the human suffering under Apartheid.

Ubu is reframed as the head of a death squad, served by a three-headed dog called Brutus. Every morning Ubu (Dawid Minnaar, in white Y-fronts and boots) comes home smelling of �blood and dynamite�. His wife, Ma Ubu (played with relish by Busi Zokufa) is convinced that his nightly absences signify infidelity. When she discovers what he is actually up to, she is far from repelled: �I had no idea he was so important!� All the same, she decides to save her own skin by informing on her husband. In the end, after confessing all, betraying their associates and thus winning amnesty, the pair escape punishment and happily sail off into the sunset to pursue their nefarious activities elsewhere.

Ubu becomes the damning metaphor for how South Africa�s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was undermined by some of Apartheid�s worst offenders, who took advantage of its offered amnesty to escape punishment for their crimes. �The righteous,� says Ubu with relish, �will have to forgive the unrighteous�.

The venal, conscienceless appetite of Ma and Pa Ubu contrasts with excerpts from witness statements to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These are delivered by puppets and narrated in Zulu. Actors at a mic in a glass box, like translators at the UN, translate their stories into English. In contrast to the other puppets � as well as the three-headed dog, there�s a mechanical vulture and a paper-shredder-handbag crocodile � these puppets are far from grotesque; they are disarmingly human, dignified, worn by grief. The distancing techniques permit their testimony to be heard with a poignant clarity; and the horror of the stories they tell are all but unbearable.

Despite its dark theme, Ubu and the Truth Commission is, like its original, often very funny, shot through with a liberating, bitterly angry comedy. When Ubu delivers his testimony to the Truth Commission, the microphones rebel, swinging in protest and beating him up. And there was the rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight, with rather different lyrics, sung by Ubu and the three-headed dog.

This isn�t a show that demands empathy of its audience, although of course empathy is part of what I felt: rather, it demands larger understanding. It brutally dismantles the comforting myth that in the end, justice will always be done, truth will always prevail. In Ubu�s world, the powerful remain unpunished, and the powerless are denied the justice that ought to be theirs. And in 2015, that world looks discomfortingly like ours.

The Paper Architect

Puppets have been a recurring theme in this year�s Perth Festival, Jonathan Holloway�s last before he moves to take over the Melbourne Festival. From Ubu to Madama Butterfly to the spectacle of the Giants, their peculiar magic has manifested at every scale.

One of the most charming shows this year is also one of the smallest. Davy and Kristin McGuire�s The Paper Architect is a 45 minute masterclass in puppetry and animation, which pays tribute to the impracticalities and beauty of human imagination and craft. Performed in a former school repurposed as the CIA interdisciplinary artist�s studios, it takes place in a tiny room with a small audience.

We are led in through a maze of cardboard boxes, past exquisite model houses made of paper, into a small purpose-made theatre in which Old Stamp (John Cording) is snoozing on a chair, surrounded by his paper creations. He is woken by a knock on the door which delivers an eviction notice, which he puts in a pile with other ignored correspondence. Old Stamp has withdrawn from a world with which, it seems, he is unable to cope.

Instead, he has peopled his solitude with his marvellous paper creations: small white mansions and intricate landscapes, cemeteries, parks, rivers, made with painstaking care. He picks up a tiny paper dancer and, in a breathtaking moment of animation, we watch as her shadow comes to life and runs into a diorama of paper trees. We watch as a boy, perhaps a memory of Old Stamp himself, attempts to woo her. His mistake is in attempting to capture her: she won�t be caught, and finally vanishes out of our vision.

It�s an enchanting show, fascinating in its ingenuity and beautifully performed. In the end, Old Stamp prepares to move out of his house, embracing reality. We don�t know what will happen to him, or to his tiny models. He must, he says, �let it go�, an understanding never said better than by William Blake:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

Ubu and The Truth Commission play Feb 24 - 28 at the State Theatre Centre of WA. The Paper Architect plays Feb 26 - March 7 as part of Perth International Arts Festival. For more information perthfestival.com.au


- Alison Croggon


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