"My approach to creating a "sonic response" of Ubu Roi was to first record a portion of the production, focus on a scene or a number of them, manipulating its recordings and producing an abstract piece that represented the scene and its themes."

"The scene(s) chosen were from the beginning of the play where The Head Chef and staff enter the kitchen, Ubu entering and dropping a number different items, the Head Chef having an outburst of anger and the beginning of the following scene where Ubu is in hysterical laughter over the event that just occurred."

"These events were chosen as I thought the scene(s) itself was interesting and demonstrated a good sound environment and acoustics with the use of kitchen utensils, a contrast of emotions from the anger outburst to the hysterical laughter, a good sense of tension caused by Ubu continuing to drop items and frustrating the staff. I thought all these factors had the potential to work well in an ambisonic mix."

"I decided to play out the scene(s) as it to demonstrate good use of ambisonics for the listener to get a sense of space and to then use the idea of Ubu being in hysterical laughter after frustrating the staff to create a more surreal sound environment. The end result shows a condensed version of the scene, still showing the main events which take place, and a dreamlike section to reflect how Ubu feels about how them with lots of reverberant sounds and laughter surround the listener to create a bigger space and a sense of madness to reflect Ubu’s mind-set."

 

Credits for Ubu the King

Creator Patrick J O'Reilly and Ensemble

Producer Jen Shepherd

Music Katie Richardson

Design Ciaran Bagnall 

Cast Claire Connor, Jo Donnelly, Tony Flynn, Julie Lewis and Rhodri Lewis

Image credits: Photos by Ciaran Bagnall