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Picasso at the Lapin Agile | |
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Written by | Steve Martin |
Characters | Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso |
Date premiered | October 13, 1993 |
Place premiered | Steppenwolf Theatre Company |
Original language | English |
Setting | Montmartre |
Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a full-length play written by American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and musician Steve Martin in 1993.
The play features the characters of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, who meet at a bar called the Lapin Agile (French: "Nimble Rabbit") in Montmartre, Paris. It is set on October 8, 1904, and both men are on the verge of disclosing amazing ideas (Einstein will publish his special theory of relativity in 1905 and Picasso will paint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907). At the Lapin Agile, they have a lengthy debate about the value of genius and talent, while interacting with a host of other characters.
Each character in Lapin Agile has a specific role. For example, Schmendiman, an inventor, believes he is a genius but really knows very little, while Gaston, an amicable old Frenchman with prostate problems, is hesitant to listen to or believe anything that does not revolve around sex or drinking. There is much discussion of the major cultural influences of the twentieth century. Picasso represents art, Einstein represents science, and Schmendiman represents commercialism.
Picasso and Einstein eventually realize that their abilities are equally valuable. Once the main characters have reached their moment of insight, "The Visitor", a man from the future, crashes the party. Although the Visitor is never named, his identity can be surmised as Elvis Presley. The Visitor adds a third dimension to Picasso's and Einstein's debate, representing the idea that genius is not always the product of academic or philosophical understanding, or as Gaston refers to it, "Brains".
Martin has written: "Focusing on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Picasso’s master painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , the play attempts to explain, in a light-hearted way, the similarity of the creative process involved in great leaps of imagination in art and science". [1]
Picasso at the Lapin Agile was the first full-length play written by Steve Martin. The first reading of the play took place at Steve Martin's home in Beverly Hills, California. Tom Hanks read the role of Picasso, and Chris Sarandon read Einstein.[ citation needed ]
Martin then held a nine-day professional workshop of the play in Melbourne, Australia, at the Malthouse Theatre (in conjunction with Belvoir St Theatre), which ended with two public staged readings of the play.[ citation needed ] Following this, the play opened at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, on October 13, 1993. [3] The show then enjoyed a successful run at the Westwood Playhouse (now known as the Geffen Playhouse) in Los Angeles, California.[ citation needed ] Finally, the show made its way to New York City. The play has also had successful runs in other American cities.[ citation needed ]
Martin made several attempts to create a film version of the play, but none came to fruition. On November 27, 2006, Martin announced on his website that "there is no movie of Picasso at the Lapin Agile in the works". [4]
The play was pulled from La Grande High School in La Grande, Oregon in March 2009 following a parent-led petition with 137 names opposed to the staging of the play. The petitioners objected to some of the adult themes and content, in response to which Martin wrote that the students knew that the "questionable behavior sometimes evident in the play is not endorsed.” In his letter to La Grande Observer , he compared the characterization that the play is about "people drinking in bars and treating women as sex objects" to summarizing Shakespeare's Hamlet as being "about a castle.” Martin responded to the banning of the play at La Grande High School with an offer to underwrite a production of the play at an alternative location, stating he did not want the play to acquire "a reputation it does not deserve.” [5]
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held as one of the most influential scientists. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Lapin Agile is a famous Montmartre cabaret, at 22 Rue des Saules, 18th arrondissement of Paris, France.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó, a street in Barcelona, Spain. The figures are confrontational and not conventionally feminine, being rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes, some to a menacing degree. The far left figure exhibits facial features and dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. The two adjacent figures are in an Iberian style of Picasso's Spain, while the two on the right have African mask-like features. Picasso said the ethnic primitivism evoked in these masks moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force” leading him to add a shamanistic aspect to his project.
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El Greco, 1541 – April 7, 1614) was a prominent painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, whose dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century.
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Albert Einstein has been the subject of, or inspiration for, many works of popular culture.
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