Premiere of Ubu Roi

Date: December 10, 1896 • Location: Paris, France

Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi premieres in Paris. A riot breaks out at the end of the performance.

Alfred Jarry was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), often cited as a forerunner of the Dada, Surrealist, and Futurist movements of the 1920s and 1930s and later the theatre of the absurd in the 1950s and 1960s. He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.