The 2008-2009 theater season kicks off on Wednesday, Sept. 24 with the premiere of “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.” There are five productions of the play running on Sept. 24-26, 28 and Oct. 1-4, with curtain at 7:30 p.m. on weeknights and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.

The play is written by Steve Martin in the early 1990’s and is a comedy. It has been around for a while now, winning awards such as the 1996 Outer Critics Circle Award for best play and best writer. The first run of the play ever was at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in 1993. The play has run everywhere from San Francisco in 1998 to New York, and now Auburn is lucky enough to have their own rendition of it in the Telfair Peet Theatre, located on Auburn University’s campus.

The play is set in 1904 in a Paris bistro, Lapin Agile (which translates to the nimble rabbit), and it depicts a meeting between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein before they became famous. In the play, Einstein is just about to submit his first paper on relativity for publication and Picasso is ready to enter his Rose Period. Elvis also makes an appearance at the bar, but they never say his name, just that he is a hip shaking singer from Memphis that wears blue shoes. It sounds a little crazy but the wit and humor is fast in the dialogue between characters. The comedy is framed around how these men shape the 21st century; pretty interesting stuff.

While writing it, Martin combined his two favorite things: science and art. So the play is a unique blend of two great minds with a hint of pop culture (Elvis) dueling it out to see who would shape the 21st century the most. Picasso paints a picture of the Lapin Agile, which was Martin’s inspiration for the play. He thought the painting made an interesting path from the little bar in Paris to display at the Met. The same goes for the great minds of Einstein and Picasso.

I was lucky enough to hang around in the Green Room, a room in the basement of the theater where cast members, crew and other theater-involved students hang out and rehearse in between classes and before hair and makeup. I interviewed Emily Stephens, a junior major in B.F.A theater performance. Stephens plays Germaine in the play, who has an affair with Albert Einstein.

Preparation for this kind of production is not easy stuff. “We have been practicing for 30 hours a week for four weeks,” says Stephens. “It pays off though, because on opening night there were barely any seats left in the audience. We were almost sold out, which is a great feeling.”

Stephens has been doing theater since 5th grade. After graduating from Auburn, she plans to attend graduate school in Montgomery while working the Alabama Shakespearean Festival, then hopefully moving on to film in Los Angeles.

Tickets are available at the theater box office on weekdays from noon-5 p.m. and admission is free for students that present their student I.D. General admission is $20. For faculty and staff, admission is $15 and grade school and high school student admission is $10. For more information, visit http://media.cla.auburn.edu/theatre/. For reservations, call 844-4154.



Find more videos like this on The Loveliest Village