The Lapin Agile (which translates as “the agile rabbit) is a real bar in Paris that still exists. Picasso immortalized it when he painted At the Lapin Agile that includes a self-portrait of Picasso himself sitting at the bar. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Lapin Agile was a gathering place for Picasso and his artist friends (and rivals)—artists who would soon transform the way we look at art. The year is 1904 and, two years later, Picasso would paint his famous Demoiselles d’Avignon, a cubist painting of five women that many believe launched the modern art movement. About the same time young Albert Einstein, with the publication of his Special Theory of Relativity transformed modern physics and gave scientists a whole new way of looking at the universe. How we look at the universe and the world around us, our point of view and our perspective—what we see in our mind’s eye is at the core of the human imagination and is the subject of Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Martin of course added his own imaginative touches (Einstein and Picasso never met for instance) to create his own comic universe with its off-the-wall, off-kilter kaleidoscopic view of the world. In this world, the genius of art and science (and comedy) collide.
(Charleston Stage Resident Actor Brian Zane as Pablo Picasso)