Picasso Script, Round 2

Now that more of you have had a chance to see A Picasso, I feel better about exploring the script with more detail.

SPOILER ALERT - If you haven't seen the show yet, this may mess with your experience. If you'd like, you can also read the first, more general post about the script.

One point during the show that always amazes me (and mind you, I run sound, so I hear it every night) is when Picasso gets Miss Fischer to talk about her former lover. In a sequence that another playwright might parse out of existence, Miss Fischer lets her views on art, artists, and sex crash together in a few words. This would be just another clever double entendre, except that Hatcher uses it to prove a point Picasso makes throughout the show. It isn't shouted, but in the world that exists between these two characters, they've arrived at a strange mutual truth.

The exchange concerns the eventual fate of Miss Fischer's unnamed former lover, told in dialogue that, all at once, conflates his artwork with his bedroom performance. Now, bear with me here.

MISS FISCHER: I have had an artist. It wasn't satisfactory.
PICASSO: In Paris?
MISS FISCHER: Berlin.
PICASSO: Not the same thing.
MISS FISCHER: He was a painter.
PICASSO: Was he good?
MISS FISCHER: No. Very avant-garde. Nothing ever looked like anything.
PICASSO: Did you pose for him?
MISS FISCHER: No.
PICASSO: If you want to make love to a woman, paint her portrait. Gets her to reveal her breasts.
MISS FISCHER: He asked, but I said we should go straight to bed; more efficient. It did not last long. Every time I'd catch him in bed with another woman, he'd give a speech...

A few lines later, Miss Fischer reveals that he was killed for signing his name "in very big letters" to a manifesto issued by a political art group. Before we look at the significance of politics here, start with the questions and answers they've just given.

When Picasso asks if the dead artist was "good," Miss Fischer doesn't stop to ask if he means as an artist or as a lover. The same answer suffices for both: "No." The fact that she doesn't pause, doesn't flinch before answering--basically, lets his question retain both meanings--suggests the true bond between them, even though she hasn't given away much about herself at this point in the play. Perhaps she doesn't care which he meant. And perhaps she knows he sees them as one.
And then...she does it again. The audience is invited to laugh at "it did not last long" before she puts it into context as the term of their relationship. The first time, the dead artist's lack of prowess was conflated with his lack of painting skill; the second time, with his lack of character. (This can also be read as a subtle jab at Picasso. Just because she agrees doesn't mean he's not a rascal.)

Later in the script, Picasso staunchly insists that political art is, by nature, bad art ("The worst art in the world is political") even if good art can lead to political conclusions ("...and when they gaze on [Guernica] for its greatness, they will remember why it was painted.") Hatcher seems to be communicating a worldview, a blanket judgement. Miss Fischer challenges Picasso on many things, but here she seems to slyly cede him the point, even to bolster it. As such, the world of the play provides no counterexample to this train of logic: Correct intention = good thought = good art = good artist = good lover. Hatcher's themes certainly go beyond all this, but as the show's dynamics rely on the interplay of art, politics, and sex, this is a telling--and entertaining--part of the whole.

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Okay, this is fun. I might try to get another script post in before we close the show...which will be, if you haven't heard yet, on the 19th. Yay extended run!

Picasso Script / Keith of the Apprenti

A Picasso: This Script Rocks (no spoilers)

Jeffrey Hatcher's script is a triumph of structure, which is the reason a play about so much (art vs. politics, inspiration, fame, love/hate relationships both emotional and intellectual...) holds together so well as a story. In lesser hands, this stuff would be all over the map, bloated and alienating. Fortunately, it's constructed as a taut, funny faceoff with enormous scope.

The audience gets brought into the period and the Paris art world through subtle reference and repetition (take note of the artists to whom they refer and in what order), trusting the audience enough to catch on without overdoing it. The play is structured cyclically, setting up and returning to examinations of three self-portraits. In effect, the analysis of Picasso's work becomes a dissection of Picasso's psyche, resulting in a battle of wills.

My favorite part of all this is that Picasso and Miss Fischer constantly force each other to reveal new sides of themselves, acing the trick of having a character evolve in front of an audience. The two actors, in a way, "sell" each other's development, and this, aside from the intellectual fireworks, is what makes the story pop: their relationship is continually shifting, all the way through the end of the show. On one hand, sometimes I feel like I could draw the script out in some kind of diagram (by the way, I count this as a good thing)...on the other, it's vibrant, engrossing, and, dare I say it, snappy.

I've done my best not to drop any spoilers in here. Perhaps once more people have seen the show, I'll feel better about discussing details. What do you think?

In Other News: One More Apprentice

As promised, we have a new apprentice. His name is Keith. Be kind to him, for soon we (myself and Mike) shall mold him in our own image. Muhuhahahahahaha.

(I mean, it's not that hard. He's already a skinny dude with glasses.)