Obelix

Obelix (Obélix in French) is a cartoon character and the main protagonist in the French comic book series Asterix. He works as a menhir sculptor and deliveryman, and is Asterix's best friend. Obelix is noted for his fatness, the menhirs he carries around on his back and his superhuman strength. He fell into a cauldron of magic potion when he was a baby, causing him to be the only Gaul in Asterix's village who is permanently superhumanly strong. Because of this already enormous strength, Obelix is not allowed to drink the magic potion ever again, a ban he regards as being tremendously unfair. Other characteristics are his simplemindedness, his love and care for his dog Dogmatix, his anger when someone refers to him as being "fat", his enthusiasm for hunting and eating wild boars and beating up Romans. His catchphrase is: "Ils sont fous ces romains", which translates into "These Romans are crazy!", although he considers nearly every other nationality to be just as strange.

The character was portrayed by actor Gérard Depardieu in every Asterix live-action movie.

List of minor planets: 29001–30000

UND

UND or Und may refer to:

Howard Barker

Howard E. Barker (born 28 June 1946) is a British playwright.

The Theatre of Catastrophe

Barker has coined the term "Theatre of Catastrophe" to describe his work. His plays often explore violence, sexuality, the desire for power, and human motivation.

Rejecting the widespread notion that an audience should share a single response to the events onstage, Barker works to fragment response, forcing each viewer to wrestle with the play alone. "We must overcome the urge to do things in unison" he writes. "To chant together, to hum banal tunes together, is not collectivity." Where other playwrights might clarify a scene, Barker seeks to render it more complex, ambiguous, and unstable.

Only through a tragic renaissance, Barker argues, will beauty and poetry return to the stage. "Tragedy liberates language from banality" he asserts. "It returns poetry to speech."

Themes

Barker frequently turns to historical events for inspiration. His play Scenes from an Execution, for example, centers on the aftermath of the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and a fictional female artist commissioned to create a commemorative painting of the Venetian victory over the Ottoman fleet. Scenes from an Execution, originally written for Radio 3 and starring Glenda Jackson in 1984, was later adapted for the stage. The short play Judith revolves around the Biblical story of Judith, the legendary heroine who decapitated the invading general Holofernes.