David Hockney’s first theatre designs were created for the Royal Court Theatre’s 1966 revival of Alfred Jarry’s satirical play Ubu Roi. Initially hesitant - perhaps out of concern that the project would be too didactic - Hockney was drawn in by Jarry’s unconventional instructions, which rejected traditional scenery in favour of simple signs and playful visual cues: 'You can invent lots of things because Jarry gives lots of instructions like: "Don't bother about scenery, just put a sign up saying 'Polish Army’" and that really appealed to me. And some of the sets are just like that.' (Hockney quoted in 'DAVID HOCKNEY by David Hockney', Thames and Hudson, London, 1976, p103).

Approaching the project scene by scene, he produced a series of drawings that formed the basis of the production’s look. His concept centred on deliberately modest, painted backdrops - large canvases roughly twelve by eight feet - hung with oversized ropes to mimic the feel of a toy theatre.

A 1966 review of the drawings in the New York Times praised them as follows: "Wittily simplified in a cut- out, toy-town manner with a few pop-art jokes worked into the costumes […] they are faithful to Jarry's directions for a totally non-realistic, puppet-play presentation. They give Hockney, moreover, a chance to carry over into a different medium some of the ideas about pictorial space that largely occupy him in his painting. […] In the first place, he's a figurative artist, and in the second he is possessed of a beguilingly whimsical turn of imagination that appeals to all who still believe that the genius of English art lies basically in literary illustration. But he is nevertheless a painter extremely conscious of the times he lives in, both as an artist and as a social being."(David Thompson, ‘David Hockney: A Natural Dandy and ‘Ubu Roi’ in The New York Times, Aug 14th 1966)

David Hockney’s Ubu Roi set designs mark the start of his lifelong engagement with theatre and performance. Several further examples from Hockney's Ubu Roi series reside in the permanent collection of MoMA, New York.