• Brandon Ingram on power, politics and the absurdity of UBU

When a scroll can take us from a dancing cat to footage of war in a matter of seconds, the line between reality, performance and absurdity has become increasingly difficult to locate. It is within this fractured landscape that Brandon Ingram is reimagining Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi for a contemporary audience. 

His new production, UBU, the first theatrical work from newly launched Sri Lankan creative company KARANDA, moves beyond Jarry’s original characters to examine power, influence and the relentless pursuit of attention in an age shaped by algorithms and social media. Devised collaboratively with its cast, the production asks what happens when everything – from politics and genocide, to influencers, memes and cat videos – is competing for the same finite resource: our attention. 

Ahead of its November premiere in Colombo, Ingram spoke to The Daily Morning Brunch about the performance of power, the absurdity of modern reality and why he wants audiences to leave UBU with questions of their own.

Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi was written well over a century ago. What made you feel it was the right time to reinterpret it for a world shaped by algorithms, social media and endless scrolling?  

I believe that Jarry saw the concept of power turning into farce, and he threw in a bit of absurdity to write something that has since been reinterpreted in a hundred different ways over the two centuries since it was first staged. I see the world Jarry lived in is still the one we live in today. The only difference is that the line between reality and the absurd doesn't exist anymore. UBU is a new show in every sense of itself. It deals with power as we understand it today. What it borrows from Ubu Roi are the names of some of its characters and the idea that the desire for control will drive us to do unfathomable things. 

Your production suggests that leadership today can become a form of performance. How does UBU explore the blurred line between governing, entertaining and simply holding people's attention?  

We live in what I like to call The Attention Economy. Time is the currency everyone is looking to spend, is wanting you to spend on them. Boring leaders don't make headlines, they lack engagement, and without it they mean nothing. Every leader has a PR team that is working hard behind the scenes to maintain their approval ratings and their personality scores. In a world where perception is reality, sensationalism wins. A woman or man may be a “good leader,” but the people will agree that they are based on how they dress, who they're married to, what their fitness routines are, and what causes they get behind. This is not fiction or a suggestion. Performance is unavoidable for a leader who wants to stay in power. 

The promotional material asks what happens when genocide, war, politics, memes, influencers and cat videos all compete for our attention. Was there a particular real-world event or online phenomenon that sparked this central idea? 

 The real world event is happening everyday on your devices. Just scroll down your feed and you’ll find yourself "hearting" a dancing dog and a story about war survivors in the space of seconds. Ask yourself which leaders' statements you are most familiar with – for a lot of us it won't be anyone from our own country because we spend our time following the absurdities that the algorithms consider to be of high value to us. Truth, today, really is stranger than fiction. 

As a fully devised production, how did the cast and creative team collaborate to build this version of UBU, and what surprised you during that process?

 In the beginning I created a set of guidelines for the world we were building, and I navigated the cast through that world. They developed their own characters, and for the most part have written their own dialogue. What surprised me was how well everything and everyone connected to the story of the world we had built together. It was easy to fit the pieces together, it was as though the cast were thinking through a single mind from very early on in the process. What shocks me is that all of them, even at this stage of rehearsals, have not seen the entire show yet. 

Political satire can provoke laughter while also making audiences uncomfortable. What kind of conversations are you hoping people will be having as they leave the theatre? 

I'm hoping people will come for the show, I'm hoping they will enjoy it, find some humour in it and see the irony of some of the things we're discussing. The conversations they have after it are theirs entirely. I do not wish to shape their thinking in any way; but I do hope it inspires a lot of thinking and a lot of dialogue. I simply do not wish to determine what that dialogue will or should be. 

Without giving too much away, what can audiences expect from the staging of UBU? 

Are there any innovative theatrical or multimedia elements that help recreate the chaotic, algorithm-driven world you've imagined?  We are challenging ourselves by toying with 'Restrictive Play'. How that presents itself to an audience is anyone's guess at this point of the process. Devising requires us to play with as many styles as possible, leading all the way up the performance itself. Let's see what happens. 

At its heart, UBU asks, “What is our responsibility?” If audiences were to leave with just one lasting question or realisation about their own relationship with media, power and attention, what would you hope it would be?  

The world of communication media already shapes enough audience perception. I have no intention of controlling any of that with this production. I would hope that people leave my show feeling entertained, and that it was money well spent.