DESIRE, CAUGHT BY THE TAIL

By Pablo Picasso

Staged reading at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center: Watermill, NY (2000)

Designed and Directed by Maria Pessino

ABOUT THE PLAY

The play is beyond criticism and likewise beyond those who seek more in it than a farcical creation of new objects and new relations. It does not invite comparison with Hamlet or Phedre, though it does with Ubu Roi. It says nothing of human destiny or the human condition. In an age which has discovered Man, it is gratifying to advise the reader that Picasso has nothing to say of man, nor or the universe. This in itself is a considerable achievement. In fact the characters are not even human. Nor, except for the Two Bow-wows, which articulate briefly, are they animal. This is a further achievement. The reader should note these matters.

— Bernard Frethman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pablo Picasso (1881-1899) was born in 1881 in Spain. His birth name is 23 words long; the family called him Ruiz, not Pablo, when he was a boy. In 1900 In 1900, Picasso changed his name from Ruiz to Pablo Picasso. He moved to Paris and strained his relationship with his parents by rejecting fine art styles in favor of new techniques. Picasso landed his first paid job, earning 150 francs each month for his paintings. Picasso wandered throughout Europe, a habit that he would continue for the rest of his life.

SELECTIONS FROM PICASSO’S STAGE DIRECTIONS

Act II
Scene I – A corridor in hotel Sordid. Shadows of monkeys eating carrots.
Scene II – All characters in bathtub filled with soapsuds in period costumes. Undertaker dumps actors in coffins and carries them off.

Act III
Scene II – Characters cut off big foots hair until bald. Whips of sun strike the actresses through venetian blinds. All actresses faint, covered in blood.

Act IV
Potatoes are heard, seen and smelled in boiling oil. Smoke of potatoes fills the theater to complete suffocation.

Act V
Tart pisses, farts and syphillises for a good fifteen minutes.

Act VI
In the sewer bedroom of the Anguishes. Actors, filthy dirty, get out of bed filled with French fried potatoes.

CAST

Scott Core, Larry Nathanson, Michael Citranini, Janice Bishop, Jacqui Leader, Dominique Hawksly, Eric Davies, Kristin Sinkel

PRESS

Review: Desire, Caught by the Tail
Dan's Papers - August 11, 2000
Marion Wolberg Weiss
view article (pdf)