Ubu 2000

"Bush. Gore. Nader. Ubu? Synaesthetic Theatre takes Ubu Roi and makes it Ubu Raw, adapting Alfred Jarry's puppet play into a live-action sacrilege of what present-day America holds dear. The filth-spewing candidate for dictator of New York shakes hands and kisses babies, all the while subverting comfortable notions of sex, gender, race, and power."
(Alexis Soloski, Village Voice)

"Coinciding with the strangest presidential election in decades, Synaesthetic Theatre presented Ubu 2000 last November at Nada Show World, an infamous New York adult entertainment center near Times Square now converted into an Off Off Broadway theatre ... [It was] an evening of edgy sketch comedy designed to assault the audience's sensibilities about politicians, racial stereotypes, and the Gap-and-Starbucks' strip-malling of New York.

"[Synaesthetic's] unique productions are multilayered, in meanings and theme as well as design ... Ubu 2000 took the idea of environmental immersion a step further, utilizing the former strip club's gloriously tawdry mirror-tiles walls and ceiling and chasing rope light. On top of that, the work was presented in a sort of reverse in-the-round format, with the audience sitting around cabaret tables situated in a central square, separated from the four surrounding performance platforms by chain link fencing. This gave the piece an urban vacant-lot quality, and played on the sideshow aspect ... who was the freak being fenced off, the performers or the audience?"
(Amy L. Slingerland, Entertainment Design Magazine, volume 35/ February 2001/ number 2)

Directors Aubrey Hardwick and Chris Nichols exchanged ideas with Dr. Lenora Fulani and Dr. Fred Newman on the Fulani! Show, a weekly public affairs television show that "creates a zone for open-ended conversations with authors, scientists, political activists, theater artists and newsmakers that goes beyond six-minute segment or the 30-second sound bite."

The episode aired in Manhattan on November 16th, 2000 and nationally over the following two weeks.