There are all sorts of entertainment for all sorts of occasions, but I’ll always like best the kind that upsets conventions and makes the audience want to tear down the stage. Do not please the people–the people are already far too pleased. Playwright Alfred Jarry angered ticket buyers in just such a fashion in 1896. An excerpt about the tumult from Karl Whitney at 3:AM Magazine:

“Arguably Jarry’s greatest literary creation, and certainly his best known, was the character of Père Ubu, the corpulent and vulgar ‘King of Poland’ who emerged, swearing forcefully, in Ubu Roi (performed onstage in 1896, but printed versions predate the theatrical performances). The first performances of the play caused a stir. Partly, this was because of the shock of the new – as Brotchie points out: ‘it was as though a modernist play from the middle of the next century had been dropped on the stage without all the intervening theatrical developments that might have acclimatized the audience to its conventions.’ On the other hand, many of Jarry’s friends in the avant-garde weren’t leaving anything to chance: they turned up with mischief in mind, and caused – or at least contributed to – an uproar in the theatre. At one point the poet Fernand Gregh shouted out his opinion: ‘It’s as beautiful as Shakespeare,; to which his own brother shot back from the balcony: ‘You’ve never even read Shakespeare, you imbecile!'”

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“Bon jour, Père Ubu”: