Auditions for Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Present Company Theatre, April 18 and 20, 2013

Present Company is thrilled to announce auditions for our next production, Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin, to be performed on the rooftop plaza of Whole Foods Market at 5th and Lamar this summer.

In partnership with Whole Foods Market, Present Company will present Martin's intelligent and quirky comedy June 14-30, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings, with rehearsals beginning early May. Actors will receive a profit-share/stipend.

 

Auditions will be Thursday, April 18th from 6:30-8:45pm at the Carver Museum (1165 Angelina St - click for map) and Saturday April 20th from 10-2pm at the Dougherty Arts Center (1110 Barton Springs Rd -- click for map). Callbacks, if necessary, will be the following week.

Please prepare a 2-minute contemporary comedic monologue. Actors could potentially be asked to read provided sides from the play. Proficiency with accents a plus.
Please e-mail headshot, resume, and ideal audition time to presentcompanyaustin@gmail.com for an appointment. 
Walk-ins will be seen as time allows.

Thanks and break legs!

All roles available:

Freddy, owner & bartender of The Lapin Agile

Gaston, an older man

Germaine, waitress and Freddy's girlfriend

Albert Einstein, age 25

Suzanne, age 19(ish)

Sagot, Picasso's art dealer

Pablo Picasso, age 23

Charles Schmediman, a young man

The Countess

A female admirer

A visitor (who turns out to be Elvis)

Upcoming: Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin, Texas State University, February 7 - 12

Found on-line:

presents

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

by Steve Martin
Directed by Aaron Johnson
February 7-11 at 7:30 p.m., Februaury 12 at 2:00 p.m.

[poster image: Geoffrey Douglas]

Laugh along with the noble denizens of a down-and-out Parisian bar as a youthful Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso meet in 1904 shortly before either is to become famous. As they debate art and science, they are eventually interrupted by a time-traveling stranger, the once and future King from Tupelo, Mississippi, who adds his own "twist" to the discussion. This inventive, witty comedy was the first full-length play by Steve Martin, the award-winning actor, writer, comedian, and musician.

Click for more information and performance image at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Austin Playhouse, March 27 - May 2

Kimberly Barrow as the enamored Suzanne comes to the "Lapin Agile" -- the "Nimble Rabbit" -- bar-bistro, looking for Pablo Picasso, the man who enraptured her by drawing a dove on the back of her hand and then having his way with her. She learns, eventually, that maybe the second time is not as good as the first.

I can share that feeling. I reviewed Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile last year as done by the Sam Bass Community Theatre in Round Rock. Theirs was, I reported, "a charming production of a quirky play by America's quirky funnyman Steve Martin." My review tracked through the plot and had a tone of satisfied amusement.

On viewing this Austin Playhouse staging, the thrill was gone, It seemed to me that Steve Martin, like his character Picasso, was seeking too hard to amaze.

Martin sets us in a Paris bistro in 1904, when the young Albert Einstein worked as a clerk in the patent office and the young Pablo Picasso, hungry and unknown, was seeking artistic expression, money, fame and women. His premise is that their encounter at the "Nimble Rabbit" bistro-bar was a defining moment for the twentieth century.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Images by Christopher Loveless: Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Austin Playhouse, March 26 - May 2

Click for ALT review, April 22

Images of Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Christopher Loveless, courtesy of Austin Playhouse:

This production plays March 26 - May 2 at
Austin Playhouse, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C
Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m .
Prices: $26 Thursdays, Fridays, $28 Saturdays, Sundays
$35 Opening Night, March 26, 2010
All student tickets are half-price
Tickets/Information at (512) 476-0084

[photo: Robert Matney as Einstein, with Kimberly Barrow]

It’s 1904 in Paris and a young Albert Einstein is working on a very famous theory. At the same time, a young Pablo Picasso is almost ready to “leave Blue behind.” At the Lapin Agile, a cabaret bar in Montmartre, Paris,frequented by artists, anarchists, and dreamers, these two young visionaries meet and engage in a lively debate on the creative process and the true nature of genius.

View additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin, Austin Playhouse, March 26 - May 2

Click for ALT review, April 22

UPDATE: Review by Olin Meadows for AustinOnStage.com, April 12

UPDATE: Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com, April 8

Received directly:

Austin Playhouse presents

Picasso at the Lapin Agile
by Steve Martin

March 26 - May 2, 2010
Austin Playhouse, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg. C
Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m .
Prices: $26 Thursdays, Fridays, $28 Saturdays, Sundays
$35 Opening Night, March 26, 2010
All student tickets are half-price
Tickets/Information at (512) 476-0084

It’s 1904 in Paris and a young Albert Einstein is working on a very famous theory. At the same time, a young Pablo Picasso is almost ready to “leave Blue behind.” At the Lapin Agile, a cabaret bar in Montmartre, Paris,frequented by artists, anarchists, and dreamers, these two young visionaries meet and engage in a lively debate on the creative process and the true nature of genius.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile was written in 1993 by famed comedian and actor Steve Martin. It is set on October 8, 1904, a time when Einstein and Picasso were both on the verge of executing a tremendous act of genius. Einstein will publish his theory of relativity in 1905 and Picasso will paint 'Les Demoiselles d’Avignon' in 1907.

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."

Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a playful, witty, incredibly funny look at how artists, scientists, and other inventors bound past society’s norms to enhance and advance humanity’s understanding of itself. Bringing the play to life is an incredible ensemble including Ben Wolfe as Picasso, Robert Matney as Einstein, Huck Huckaby as Freddy, Cyndi Williams as Germaine, Tom Parker as Gaston, David Stahl as Sagot, Kimberly Barrow as Suzanne and The Countess, Barry Miller as Schmendiman, and Jason Newman as The Singer.

The play is directed by Austin Playhouse Associate Artistic Director Lara Toner (Age of Arousal, The Turn of the Screw), with set design by Jessica Colley-Mitchell (Misalliance, A Flea in Her Ear), costume design by Buffy Manners (Misalliance, Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and lighting design by Don Day (Misalliance, Frost/Nixon).

Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Sam Bass Community Theatre, January 30 - February 21

Round Rock's Sam Bass Community Theatre gives us a charming production of this quirky play by America's quirky funny man Steve Martin.

Here's the premise: since Pablo Picasso used to hang out at a bar-café in Paris called "The Nimble Rabbit," just suppose that one morning in 1904 Albert Einstein happened to meet him there. Einstein was a poorly paid patent examiner but by night he was working on his "Special Theory of Relativity." Two of the formative geniuses of the 20th century!! Art and Science, just about to flourish, ignorant of what awaited them! What a great concept!

Lots of zany humor here, verbal and conceptual paradox, anachronism gone amok -- we are loose in Steve Martin's head. John Gall, designing the cover for the paperback edition of the play, caught this precisely.



Martin delights in his unseen role in this play. From the opening scenes he plays mischievous tricks on the audience and the characters, breaking the stage illusion and bending time and space to suit his funnybone. Getting an astounded and delighted laugh from the audience for that bit of business, Martin secures their consent for some serene irrealities and not-possible meditations on genius and fame. This play is done in one act, quite possibly because any audience pauses for reflection might break that spell.

Bar-café owner Freddy (Grant Kail) and his waitress/main squeeze Germaine (Amy Lewis) are simple, hard-working folk, the tolerant hosts of a floating crowd of regulars such as the bibulous Gaston (Paul Arndt).

Into their premises that morning comes an unexpected eccentric, the young patent examiner Albert Einstein. Quite apart from Martin's initial prank about getting Einstein into the bar twice in looped space-time, Freddy and Germaine don't quite know what to make of the young man. Einstein says that he's waiting for the Countess, who has a rendez-vous with him in another establishment but since she's just as eccentric as he is, she's certain to go somewhere else, so why not here? That's the Martinesque nutty logic that bounces throughout this piece.

Enter Ellie Vixie, clad in brilliant red and wrapped in dreams of Pablo Picasso. In giddy transport she insists on telling the whole story of their impetuous, wild encounter, in anticipation of meeting him once more here at the Lapin Agile. She waves a penciled sketch on a napkin given her by the artist after their encounter.

The twentieth century! It's already 1904, and bar-owner Freddy can never quite get the date right, but playwright Martin sets his characters into contemplation of events to come. Here's some of his most divine nonsense, genuinely funny despite his wink-wink unseen presence behind the text. First Germaine the waitress and then Freddy make predictions. They are outrageously wrong ("Led by Germany, this will be known as the century of peace"). In fact, the predictions are so absurd that the piece would be better served if the actors slowed the pace here a bit, letting brain-cogs churn as they produce progressively more erroneous pronouncements.

Martin rolls in art dealer Sagot (Mary Southon, right) carrying a tiny Matisse, for meditations on art, genius and commerce, then brings Picasso (James Sadek, center) onstage in an explosion of ego, happy rant, and lust.

There's a lot of quizzically witty talk about art, including a thorough analysis of the merits of the inherited tableau of sheep in a field that is hanging behind the bar. Martin brings on a self-seeking would-be genius Schmendimann (Robert Sherman), who generally baffles everyone before disappearing.


When Picasso finally notices the lady in red, he goes after her like a bull in heat. To her dismay, he appears to have completely forgotten their first encounter. Sadek as Picasso adroitly re-seduces her with everyone looking on before he and Einstein get into chipper dialogue about genius that yields both nonsense and profundities.


And how do you resolve the plot with incongruities popping like popcorn? Martin doesn't need a magic wand. With a puff of mystery, he brings on an unnamed Visitor from the future in blue suede shoes (enter upstage, from toilets). The affable, aw-shucks Visitor declines the offer of alcohol.

He listens to the zippy dialogue; he finds everyone to be "really nice folks" and buddies briefly with alcoholic Gaston. Stephen Hendrix in this role provides a nice visual contrast with our turn-of-the-other-century friends. His lines, as words from the future, should cinch up the conclusion, but he plays them so low-key that other characters run over them.

For the finale, the ceiling lifts away to reveal unimaginable constellations, and our geniuses read their names in the stars.

Director Christina Gardner and her cast have successfully pulled off a very challenging theatre piece, once again emphasizing both the reach and the grasp of the Sam Bass Community Theatre. They've taken on Steve Martin's over-clever wit, mastered it, and made it very entertaining.

Favorites in the cast include Amy Lewis as the warm hearted but cynical Germaine, whose summary judgment on Picasso toward the end is a reluctant exoneration for him, and James Sadek as Picasso. Sadek's accent in this piece is probably not very accurate for the real Picasso, who was a Spaniard living in France, but after all, the real Picasso would have been speaking either French or Spanish (alternately, as Lady in Red Ellie Vixie recalls with a shiver of erotic memory).

Grant Kail as the practical Freddy, surrounded by geniuses, rises neatly to the occasion with the play's tag lines: ". . . in the twentieth century, no political movement will be as glorious as the movement of the line across the paper (points to Picasso), the note across the staff (indicates the Visitor), or the idea across the mind (indicates Einstein)."

Most of all, Ben Weaver sparkles in his role as Albert Einstein. Contained, naive and sincere, he has a Charlie Chaplin purity to him, a wholesome antidote to Martin's manic plotting.

Upcoming: Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Sam Bass Community Theatre, January 30 - February 21

Received January 23:

Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Written By Steve Martin
Directed By Christina Gardner
Sam Bass Community Theatre

This witty absurdist comedy is about a fictional meeting between Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso in a bar, the Lapin Agile (which means "the nimble rabbit") in 1904 Paris... it's a bar that Picasso actually frequented and even painted in an early work. As the 20th Century rushed to a close, marked by unbelievable achievements and unimaginable horrors, comedian Steve Martin created a play that wraps up the century. In Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Martin brings together three of the century's most influential figures, namely Picasso, Einstein, and a famous hip-swiveling singer from Memphis. If it sounds a little wild and crazy, that's because it is, as Martin sprinkles a little philosophy between the jokes that fly fast and furious. It's a touch of cynical humor from a playwright who may be a refined intellectual at heart, but is world-famous as that "wild and crazy guy".

Performance Dates & Times: Jan 30 - Feb 21, Thu - Sat 8:00pm, Sun 2:00pm
Prices: $15 general admission, $13 seniors/students/educators
Rating: Adult language and content - Not suitable for children

Reservations can be made at www.sambasstheatre.org, by calling (512) 244-0440 or by emailing reservations@sambasstheatre.org. Please include your name, a contact phone number, the number of seats you would like to reserve and the specific show you wish to attend if you call or email. Reservations for groups of 6 or more must be prepaid by sending a check to Sam Bass Community Theatre, P.O. Box 767, Round Rock, TX 78680-0767.

Location: Sam Bass Community Theatre, 600 N. Lee St (in Memorial Park), Round Rock, TX