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EUROPA AND THE ABSURD Franciszka and Stefan Themerson share a lifelong creative partnership – she as an artist and set designer, he as a photographer and poet. Working in the early 1930s on innovative experimental films in Warsaw, including the film poem Europa, the couple soon join the Paris art scene. They volunteered for the French army at the outbreak of war in 1939 but were forced to flee the Nazi occupation. Once in London, they set up Gabberbocchus, a publishing house and salon for cultural and scientific professionals. Alongside their own projects, they play a crucial role in disseminating English translations of texts related to Surrealism and avantgarde theatre, often by Central European and French writers.

  One of the most important precursors of Dada and Surrealism was the wayward French writer Alfred Jarry. His breakneck satire King Ubu from 1896 was the starting point for a whole new dramatic movement. The fragmentary plot describes a grotesque, debilitated, and capricious autocrat who leads his bullied subjects in a senseless rebellion against the King of Poland. The play’s opening line – Sheeyit! – is enough to make the opening night audience lose their composure. The scandal hit is confirmed: the performance is chaotic but still makes theatre history.

  Jarry’s way of mocking pompous bourgeois society and at the same time reflecting a troubled political time makes a deep impression on the Themersons. Franciszka works repeatedly with the play over the decades, including the legendary 1963 production with the Swedish Marionette Theatre. Her unconventional set design, simple screens carried by the actors, is faithful to Jarry’s idea of a stripped-down stage image without illusion. A radical approach that came to herald the experimental and absurd theatre of the post-war period.