The Grand Pataphysical Tribunal for the Examination, Prosecution, and Exquisite Unmasking of Grotesque Sovereignty

Docket VIII: Matter of the Belly of the State

As the American republic lurches toward its 250th anniversary, Zakros InterArts summons The People v. The King: a nine-part live civic-art tribunal of sovereign power. Broadcast as a public process of witness interviews, evidence gathering, and telematic prosecution for the current season of Bunker Fridays, the series begins Friday, May 1, 2026, continuing weekly through Friday, July 3, 2026, 4:00-5:00 PM ET.

For Docket VIII: Matter of the Belly of the State, the Court calls theater director Yury Urnov to examine Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi as a staging ground for grotesque sovereignty. Urnov's production with Cutting Ball Theater becomes evidence in the case: a wild theatrical apparatus of appetite, crude power, physical excess, kitchen-world consumption, puppet-like bodies, shouting, insult, and deliberate anti-illusion.

The Court asks the Public Jury to look closely at Ubu: the swollen belly, the spiral, the obscenity of the first word, the infantile command, the gluttonous appetite for power, and the chaos that gathers around him. Mother Ubu eggs him toward murder and monarchy. Father Ubu overthrows the King of Poland, terrorizes the people, extracts, devours, betrays, panics, and flees. His body becomes a political diagram: power as digestion, administration as appetite, sovereignty as grotesque performance.

In this docket, Urnov helps the Jury understand how a director stages the King when the King has become ridiculous but remains dangerous. Cardboard, puppetry, slapstick, marionette motion, collapsed decorum, and foul language are not decorative excesses. They are forensic tools. They show how theatrical chaos can expose the logic of a ruler who knows no boundary, respects no truth, and converts stupidity into force.

This is the final preparatory docket before Pere Ubu himself takes the stand in the concluding tribunal. Before the Jury can judge Ubu, it must learn how to see him: as a blasphemous King, a narcissistic clown, a cowardly tyrant, a digestive mechanism, and the belly of the State made flesh.

Across nine weekly witness interviews and a culminating tribunal performance, The People v. The King unfolds as a public investigation of testimony, evidence gathering, and symbolic prosecution, with online audiences seated as the Public Jury whose live chat, questions, and submissions enter the evidentiary record.

For additional information, witness bios, and series details, please visit the event page.

Find the full recorded proceedings for this docket in the Court Record.

The People v. The King | Docket 8: Matter of the Belly of the State | Witness: Yury Urnov