Wurtele Thrust Stage / June 17 – August 20, 2017

music and lyrics by STEPHEN SONDHEIM book by JAMES LAPINE directed by JOSEPH HAJ STUDY GUIDE Inside

THE PLAY Synopsis • 3 The Characters • 4 Responses to the Play • 5, 6 Songs and Scenes • 5

THE PLAYWRIGHTS Sondheim and Lapine • 7, 8 In the Authors’ Words • 9

CULTURAL CONTEXT The Painter: George Seurat • 11 The Painting: Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte • 13 The Movement: Neo-Impressionism • 14 Elements and Principles of Art • 15 Paris in the 1880s • 16

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Understanding • 18

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“A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, ” Georges Seurat Synopsis

Early on a Sunday morning in 1880s ongoing romantic entanglements going to America with Louis, who Paris on the island of La Grande become clear. Dot arrives with has been hired by Mr. and Mrs. Jatte, a young painter named Louis and works on reading lessons George [Seurat] draws his mistress from a grammar book. Mr. and Mrs., Back on Grande Jatte, George Dot. People enjoy their day off at an American couple, love Louis’ tells his nostalgic mother that he the park, including painter Jules pastries but not much else about makes things beautiful in his art. and his wife Yvonne, who have just Paris. George meditates on having Dot arrives with her baby daughter, seen George’s most recent painting lost Dot because his art comes first. Marie, hoping to get the painting on exhibit, and a Nurse and an Old Dot returns to show George that of her before they all leave for Lady, George’s mother. Later that she is pregnant with his child. America. As more visitors arrive, day at his studio, George works tempers flare and they all descend on his next painting while Dot Later, at George’s studio, Dot asks into chaos, which George brings prepares for the evening out that for a painting George made of to order. He arranges them into George promised her. When he her and tells him she is marrying a tableau of Seurat’s “A Sunday gets absorbed in his painting and Louis. They’re interrupted by Jules Afternoon on the Island of La forgets, Dot storms out. and Yvonne. While Yvonne and Grande Jatte.” Dot commiserate over being in a Another Sunday and George relationship with an artist, George Having held these positions sketches while two young women explains to Jules his color theory for a long time, the characters named Celeste gossip about how and style of painting, hoping Jules complain about being stuck in a Dot is now with Louis the baker. can get the new painting seen. painting for eternity. The action More visitors arrive, and new and When they leave, Dot tells him she’s moves to the American museum

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where the Seurat painting hangs The Characters and where another artist named George is presenting his latest 1880S sculpture, Chromolume #7, with his grandmother, Marie, to honor George, Georges Seurat, an innovative painter the painting’s 100th anniversary. Dot, his mistress During the reception, while George Old Lady, George’s mother works the room, everyone talks Nurse, to the Old Lady about the hustle that is being an Jules, a famous painter artist. Marie looks at the Seurat Yvonne, his wife painting, finding her mother Dot’s Louise, their daughter image and telling George that Franz, a coachman working for Jules and Yvonne their family, including his great- Frieda, married to Franz, also works for Jules and Yvonne grandfather Seurat, and his art are Boatman both important. Celeste #1, a shopgirl Celeste #2, a shopgirl George visits La Grande Jatte to Louis, a baker present the Chromolume. Marie has Soldier passed away, and he is sad, restless The Soldier’s Companion and hoping to find something in Mr. and Mrs., an American couple visiting from Charleston the park that will confirm Marie’s story about their family. In Marie’s 1980S grammar book, he finds notes Dot wrote long ago about the painter George, an innovative sculptor George. The island – and Dot – help Marie, his grandmother, Dot’s daughter him to recognize that there is still Elaine, George’s ex-wife more he has to say as an artist. Dennis, an engineer working with George Naomi Eisen, a composer working with George Robert Greenberg, the museum’s director Lee Randolph, the museum’s PR director Harriet Pawling, a board member for the museum Billy Webster, her friend Charles Redmond, a museum director from Texas Alex, an artist Betty, an artist Blair Daniels, an art critic Waiter Photographer

Setting

Island of La Grande Jatte and George’s Studio, Paris, 1880s. An American art museum then La Grande Jatte, 1980s.

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ACT I Responses to the Play Scene 1: La Grande Jatte “Sunday in the Park with George” GEORGE, DOT The painting, Georges Seurat’s A Theatergoers always know when “No Life” Sunday Afternoon on the Island they’re being addressed with JULES, YVONNE of La Grand Jatte, depicted the burning passion: When “La Grande Scene 2: George’s Studio French bourgeoisie passing a Jatte” snaps into its finished “Color and Light” sunny day on a small island in the form on stage, the spectacle is DOT, GEORGE Seine, apparently doing not much more dramatic and emotionally of anything. Lapine and Sondheim transporting than any conventional Scene 3: Another Sunday had the intriguing notion of trying story Sondheim has ever tried to on the Island to answer two questions in their tell. “Gossip” CELESTE #1, CELESTE #2, BOATMAN, musical: Who were these people – NURSE, OLD LADY, JULES, YVONNE what were their lives really about? Frank Rich, “A Musical Theater “The Day Off” And who was Georges Seurat that Breakthrough,” The New York Times COMPANY he felt so compelled to depict them Magazine, October 21, 1984 “Everybody Loves Louis” in an apparently documentary DOT fashion – an elaborate snapshot Mr. Sondheim brought to fruition “The One on the Left” of a community in repose that his view that a relationship, SOLDIER, CELESTE #1, CELESTE #2, presented many more questions successful or not, was a giving of GEORGE than it answered? True, the actual knowledge from one person to “Finishing the Hat” subject was the artist’s insatiable another [in Sunday in the Park with GEORGE need to create and connect. But George]. … On the surface, Dot Scene 4: Back in George’s Studio there were lots of stories to tell resembles the classic masochistic “We Do Not Belong Together” along the way, and no one had musical heroine. Her lover is DOT, GEORGE done that in a narrative musical temperamental and difficult; he before. supports her, employs her; he Scene 5: Final Sunday even controls her public image by on La Grande Jatte “Beautiful” Jack Viertel, “Bushwhacking 3: The painting her. And though the two OLD LADY, GEORGE Multiplot, and How It Thickens,” The Secret love each other, the tenor of their “Sunday” , Life of the American Musical New York: life together is dictated entirely by COMPANY Sarah Crichton Books, 2016 George’s whims and his needs. ACT II As befits a show whose subject Dot has no expectation of ever Scene 1: It’s Hot Up Here is the creation of a landmark in finding anyone she loves as much “It’s Hot Up Here” COMPANY modernist painting – Georges as George, but she’s remarkably

Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the attuned to timing, and she carefully Scene 2: Museum Auditorium Island of La Grande Jatte” (1886) monitors the fragility of her own “Chromolume #7” – “Sunday” is itself a modernist self respect. She knows when she ORCHESTRA creation, perhaps the first truly has to move on, as she says. She modernist work of musical theater tells George the words that no Scene 3: Reception in the Gallery “Putting It Together” that Broadway has produced. Oscar Hammerstein heroine could COMPANY Instead of mimicking reality ever have uttered and actually “Children and Art” through a conventional, naturalistic meant: No one is you and / No one MARIE story, the authors of “Sunday” can be. / But no one is me, George, deploy music and language / No one is me. / We do not belong Scene 4: Return to La Grande Jatte in nonlinear patterns that, like together. “Lesson #8” Seurat’s tiny brushstrokes, become GEORGE meaningful only when refracted The show’s second act leaps “Move On” GEORGE, DOT through a contemplative observer’s forward in time to find Seurat’s mind. … great grandson, also named “Sunday” COMPANY George, stuck in a painful artist’s

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 5 THE PLAY block. … Feeling desperately alone, result is Sondheim’s most personal George wanders on the Parisian statement and thus, with all its odd island where Seurat painted Dot a corners and occasional wanderings, hundred years before. Dot appears his most moving. to him there. After a momentary confusion, George understand that What it isn’t is topical, not in the she wants to help him find wisdom way we use the word in the theater and give him back something of today. It has nothing to say about what Seurat gave to her. … fascism, except perhaps as it George finally begins to absorb applies to gallerists, salonistes, and what Dot is telling him when she critics. It does not weigh in on race touches on what is by now a or religion, though it touches on recurring theme in Sondheim, the gender and class. (The boatman in exchange of love as a willing and the lower left of Seurat’s painting magnanimous act. She sings: has some salty views on the Look at all the things you’ve done subject.) So many great musicals for me / Opened up my eyes, / take on such topics that it’s easy Taught me how to see, / Notice to think they are the only kind, every tree, / Understand the light … besides flat-out comedies, worth / Let me give to you / Something in treasuring; in Sondheim’s own return / I would be so pleased … catalogue, Sweeney Todd plays as a cautionary tale of class injustice Laurie Winer, “Why Sondheim’s Women Are and Assassins always teeters on the Different,” The New York Times, November verge of nightly news. But at a time 26, 1989 when art and politics are merging, when the latter is so often trotted out as if it were a necessary excuse Despite the eccentricities I’ve for the former, it may be useful, alluded to in Lapine’s book, it is a crucial even, to recall that some great one at least in part because great artists have done everything it provided Sondheim with such in their considerable power to magnificent carrion from which to keep the two apart. Beauty can be concoct his feast of a score. a public virtue. When a character But more than that, it helped sings to his wife that “Work is what Sondheim, after the disaster of you do for others, Liebchen; art is Merrily We Roll Along in 1981 what you do for yourself,” it gets a and the breakup of his long laugh of acknowledgment. But in creative partnership with Hal Sunday in the Park With George, Prince, to “move on” — just as Dot Sondheim and Lapine ask us to encourages George to do in the consider that the opposite may song of that name. (“Stop worrying also be true. if your vision is new. / Let others make that decision — they usually Jesse Green, “Theater Review: Jake do.”) Having threatened to give Gyllenhaal in Sunday in the Park with up on musical theater to write George,” Vulture.com, February 23, 2017 murder mysteries or video games, he was instead reinvigorated by the downtown purity and formal daring of Lapine’s writing, which released a different voice in him. The key thing about that voice is that it offers no excuse for itself: not for its intelligence, its faith in art, its bloodhounding for rapture. The

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presented it to Hammerstein, and asked him to critique it as though Sondheim was another professional. Hammerstein bluntly told him it was terrible, then offered to help him understand why. “In that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime,” Sondheim said later. Another great influence on Sondheim was his first music teacher at Williams College, Robert Barrow, who taught Sondheim the logic behind music. Sondheim loved Barrow’s practical, dry approach to something he had once seen as “romantic.”

In 1957, Sondheim was asked to write the lyrics for a new musical re-working of Romeo and Juliet, which would become West Side Story. It was his artistic introduction to the Broadway stage. Sondheim worked alongside composer Leonard Bernstein to write the show’s lyrics despite their vastly different approaches. Sondheim later said that he regretted some of the more poetic and romantic lyrics in the show.

1962’s A Funny Thing Happened Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim (left) and writer-director James Lapine during on the Way to the Forum was the dress rehearsal for Sunday in the Park with George, 1984. first show for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics. The musical won many Tonys, including Stephen Joshua Sondheim of Foxy – the wife of lyricist Best Musical, but Sondheim’s was born on March 22, 1930, in Oscar Hammerstein II. Sondheim score was not well received. This Manhattan to a wealthy Jewish befriended the Hammersteins’ has been a recurring theme for family. His parents, Etta Janet son James and spent more and many of Sondheim’s musicals: he’s “Foxy” and Herbert Sondheim, more of his time away from his received consistent criticism that were distant parents and spent mother and with the Hammersteins. his lyrics are too dark, his tunes are most of their time working in the Estranged from both of his parents, not “hummable,” and the subject fashion industry. In later years Sondheim found a father figure matter “wrong” for a musical. Sondheim described his childhood in Hammerstein, who brought Sondheim’s response to those as one of an “institutionalized Sondheim with his family to see who think his work inaccessible child, meaning one who has no Broadway shows. Hammerstein is that “what I write has to be contact with any sort of family.” became both teacher and listened to more than once.” His His parents divorced when inspiration. shows would often flop after a Sondheim was 10, and Foxy and short run with little profit gained, Stephen moved to Pennsylvania, In his teens, Sondheim wrote a but receive critical acclaim much not far from a designer friend musical called By George, proudly later. Sondheim’s many awards

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(including an Academy Award, are encouraged to undertake a his hand at film directing, with eight Grammys, eight Tonys and project in an area with which they his first project being Impromptu a Pulitzer Prize) are testament to are unfamiliar, Lapine’s students (1991), the screenplay of which that critical acclaim. His body of persuaded him to direct a show. was written by his wife Sarah work includes Anyone Can Whistle Lapine chose an adaptation of Kernochan. He went on to direct (1964), Company (1970), Follies Gertrude Stein’s Photograph, a and write other film projects, (1971), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily three-page-long play that consists including the 2014 screenplay for We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the of five acts. The adaptation was the movie adaptation of Into the Park with George (1984), Into the well received and after it moved to Woods. He has also continued Woods (1987), Passion (1994) and a small, Off-Broadway performance directing on Broadway, including Road Show (2008; formerly titled space in SoHo, was positively the 2012 revival of Annie. In 2013, Bounce). reviewed by The New York Times he directed an Emmy-nominated and earned Lapine an Obie Award. Stephen Sondheim documentary, Sondheim doesn’t write for the Shortly afterwards, Lapine was Six By Sondheim, for HBO. approval of his audience: “If they asked to write a piece for the don’t like it because they don’t Music-Theatre Group which became In an interesting full-circle understand it, that’s bad. That is Twelve Dreams, a work in progress development, Lapine’s niece Sarah the writer’s fault. If you write it based on a case history by Carl Lapine is the director of the 2017 and it’s clear and they don’t like it, Jung. Broadway revival of Sunday in the that’s not your fault. That’s what Park with George. art is about.” His unconventionality In 1981, Stephen Sondheim saw greatly changed the face of Twelve Dreams and was inspired American theater. He has stated by it. A partnership between the that he did not set out to change two men was formed. Lapine’s the genre, but rather kept directorial approach was always innovating because he didn’t want very visual due to his design to get bored. “Does it ever occur to background and tended towards me that I am developing any new the avant garde, which attracted kind of musical? … Never!” Sondheim. Sondheim and Lapine created Sunday in the Park with James Lapine was born on January George (1984), Into the Woods 10, 1949, in Mansfield, Ohio, to (1987) and Passion (1994) with Lillian and David Sanford Lapine. Sondheim composing and writing The Lapines lived in Mansfield lyrics and Lapine writing the until Lapine was in his teens, when books and directing each show. the family moved to Stamford, Lapine said of their partnership, Connecticut. Throughout college “I’m sort of the go-getter. I’ll throw and graduate school, Lapine’s anything on a piece of paper … And focus was not on theater – his [Sondheim]’s like ... everything’s so undergraduate degree is in meticulous. It’s hard for him to let history and his M.F.A. in design. go of things. We’re a good combo After finishing graduate school in that way.” At the same time, Lapine California, Lapine moved to New has admitted to being the more York and began creating freelance artistically pessimistic of the two, design work for the Yale School of fearing that everything will be a Drama. Impressed with Lapine’s flop, whereas Sondheim always work, Dean Robert Brustein asked assumes that his shows will be him to design in a full-time capacity successful. and gave him a part-time faculty position teaching advertisement After success on Broadway, winning design. a Pulitzer for Sunday in the Park with George and several Best Book During the annual January term at and Best Director Tonys for George, YSD, in which faculty and students Passion and Falsettos, Lapine tried

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There are certain images that people’ means to me is people with is exactly what makes him do it. always haunt me and that [the conflicts. And that’s like saying I But he’s the one who comes to a painting of “La Grande Jatte”] was like to write about character. I don’t recognition at the end. If you don’t one of them. I remember when I like to write about oversimplified connect with the past, you can’t saw the original, being mesmerized people unless it’s for something go on. People who say the second by it. … like farce, like ‘Forum.’ Songs can’t act’s not necessary misunderstand develop uncomplicated character the play. The second act is what it’s We hit on the idea of theme or unconflicted people. You can’t about. The first act’s the set-up. and variations, as opposed to just tell the sunny side and have something that was rooted in a a story with any richness to it. Stephen Sondheim, quoted in In Their Own linear story. … I thought about Good drama is the study of human Words: Contemporary American Playwrights the “Grande Jatte,” which was passions. by David Savran, New York: Theatre a painting Steve knew, and that Communications Group, 1988 was it. I just sat down and started ••• writing the play. … Seurat experimented with “Move On” is both an extension What happened was it became so the color wheel the way one and a development of “We Do Not rich. The more one looks at that experiments with a scale. He used Belong Together,” which in turn is painting, the more one discovers complementary color exactly an extension and a development these things going on that initial the way one uses dominant and of the lyrical section of “Color and investigation doesn’t reveal. It tonic harmony. When you start Light,” the seeds of which, both became apparent there was a lot to thinking about it, there are all kinds musical and verbal, have been explore. Steve tends to wait for the of analogies. It started from the planted in the interlude of “Sunday book before writing his material. He painting and the more I found out in the Park with George.” They thinks a great deal about what he’s about Seurat, the more I realized, are four parts of one long musical going to do, and he was exploring ‘My God, this is all about music.’ arc, something more apparent the musical structure he was when they are sung than on the going to base the score on. But he Stephen Sondheim, quoted in “The Words printed page. They could be read worked along with me the whole and Music of Stephen Sondheim” by Samuel as a mini-musical of their own: time. G. Freedman, The New York Times, April 1, Boy Loves Girl, Boy Loves Art, 1984 Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Both Girl I’d bring in six or seven pages, and and Art a Hundred Years Later. we’d talk about it and see where All the musical themes of the love it went, and it became clear it [W]e wanted an ending that would story culminate and intertwine would be more interesting and be sort of ineffable. Both Steve in “Move On.” The lyric is meant challenging to do not a theme and and I really like mystery – we like to connect with the earlier ones, variations but something that grew unexplained things. distantly, just the way the young a little more linear, something more George connects with his roots in rooted in plot and characters. That James Lapine, quoted in “How Two Artists the painting; words and phrases was what we finally decided on. Shaped an Innovative Musical” by Michiko like “the way she catches light” and Kakutani, The New York Times, June 10, 1984 “the color of her hair” are echoed James Lapine, quoted in “An Artist’s along with the music. If it works, Masterwork Comes to Life as a Musical” by if “Move On” feels like a satisfying Lester Bernstein, The New York Times, April Dot is the antagonist and George is and touching resolution as it does 29, 1984 the protagonist. It’s the old classical to me, it’s a tribute to my First principle: she makes him change. Principle: Less Is More. I like neurotic people. I like troubled He takes the trip. It’s all about how people. Not that I don’t like he connects with the past and ••• squared-away people, but I prefer with the continuum of humanity. neurotic people. … What ‘neurotic The spirit of Dot in the painting

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 9 With Sunday in the Park with George, of course, the structure was built in: the creation of the painting had to be one act, its consequences another. This simplicity was both the good news and the bad news. Some people who saw the show thought it should have been a one-act: the first. James and I never even considered such a possibility. The second act is the point of the show, whether we conveyed it or not. To confine the piece to the first act only would be little more than a stunt; in fact, our worry was not that people might think the second act unnecessary but that they would leave after the first simply because they felt satisfied.

Stephen Sondheim, Look, I Made a Hat, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011

I write personal because I get into characters who are real people, the playwright’s invention. They’re not just vessels to sing A-A-B-A songs. If you get inside a good character, you will always write something that touches people universally. It doesn’t mean it will be a hit, but people can identify because you know that girl, you know that guy. You know who they are and what they’re about.

•••

Whenever I appeal to anybody under 50, I feel a triumph, seriously. Seriously! Look, popular music changes every generation. And to Randy Harrison (George) in the Guthrie Theater’s production of know that people – a generation Sunday in the Park with George or two in this case, or even three generations after you – still like what you did, that’s a big compliment.

Stephen Sondheim, in “Stephen Sondheim on Seven Decades of Musical Theater, That (Misquoted) Dig on Lady Gaga and Liking Radiohead,” Billboard, November 13, 2015

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The Painter: Georges Seurat

Bessin in Normandy feature human his “Grande Jatte.” He worked on figures. One of these is at the “Grande Jatte” off and on over Minneapolis Institute of Art.) the course of two years, visiting the island, making sketches and From 1880 to 1883, Seurat painting studies. The finished developed and refined his drawing canvas was exhibited in May 1886 at style and began to paint more the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition. regularly. His work from these years It was his first substantial painting show him leaving out details to to include groupings of figures, but simplify figures and beginning to most notably “Grande Jatte” is the build forms through value (light canvas on which Seurat first used and dark) rather than depending his technique of painting with dots, on line. He achieved his mature which resulted from his systematic style sometime in 1882, when his study of color theory. The label Georges Seurat was born in Paris drawings have almost no lines, given to this style, Pointillism (also in 1859, the youngest of three light and dark define surfaces, and called Divisionism and which Seurat children of bourgeois parents. he uses the whole surface of the himself called Chromo-luminarism), Seurat’s father Antoine had retired paper. His early subjects were often describes putting pure pigments from a civil service job and lived laboring peasants; he then turned next to each other on the canvas apart from the family, traveling to suburban and urban settings of in small strokes rather than mixing from his suburban house to the city industry and recreation. it on the palette to resulting in a every Tuesday to visit them. Seurat more luminous and shimmering received an education typical of Around 1881, Seurat likely read color mixed by the eye. his gender and class, and at age 15 a translation of American color he began his formal art training at theorist Ogden Rood’s Modern While Seurat was certainly aware of a local city drawing school. Three Chromatics, which made a and affected by the work of Monet, years later, Seurat enrolled at the particular distinction between light Pissarro and other Impressionists, Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of as color and pigment as color. there is some question whether Fine Arts) in Paris to further his The work of an earlier generation he would have been identified study of drawing and painting. As of artists like Ingres (1780-1867), with or if he self-identified as an significant, if not more so, than his Delacroix (1798-1863) and Corot Impressionist. His inclusion in the formal schooling was the reading (1796-1875) were also influential to Eighth Exhibition was controversial, Seurat did independently – notably Seurat’s growing interest in color. an indication of the rift that critic and aesthetician Charles had arisen in the movement Blanc’s Grammar of Drawing Around 1883, Seurat began the first between romantic and scientific Arts, from which Seurat began to of his major canvases, “Bathers impressionists. Seurat himself was formulate his theory of color. at Asnières.” He submitted the proud of having helped to found painting to the official government and lead the Neo-Impressionist After just over a year’s study at Salon in 1884, but it was rejected, movement. A reaction against the the Beaux-Arts, Seurat served a so he submitted it to the juryless observed, spontaneous realism year’s mandatory military service Exposition des Refuses held of the Impressionists, Neo- in Brest, Brittany, during which by the Society of Independent Impressionism applied scientific time he continued to draw and Artists. “Bathers” was hung over principles to create formal to read about art. He returned to the bar and didn’t receive much compositions. Paris in 1880 to launch his career, critical attention. But Seurat never but his time in Brest had a lifelong submitted to the Salon again and Four more major canvases influence, as he returned to the became deeply involved with and a followed: “Circus Sideshow” and French seaside to paint during leader of the Independent Artists. “The Models” (1888), in which several summers in the 1880s. (Only Shortly after the Independent Seurat explored different qualities his six 1888 paintings from Port-en- exhibition, Seurat began work on of light. His final two major

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canvases show his interest in the nightlife and entertainment of Paris, followed by “The Can-Can” (1890), an interior with a sense of humor, and “The Circus” (1891), which shows Seurat’s evolution to focus less on depth of perspective and more on line, surface and color.

Sometime in the late 1880s, Seurat met Madeleine Knobloch, who is pictured in his “Young Woman Powdering Herself,” and she gave birth to their son Pierre-Georges in February 1890. His family only learned about Madeleine and his son when she brought him to his mother’s house after he suddenly fell ill while preparing for the latest Independent Artists exhibition. He passed away on March 29, 1891, and his son died a couple of weeks later of the same (unknown) disease. Seurat and his son were buried in the family vault at Père Lachaise cemetery.

— Carla Steen, production dramaturg

Erin Mackey (Dot) and Randy Harrison (George) in the Guthrie Theater’s production of Sunday in the Park with George

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The Painting: “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”

costume” gives the observer today an added pleasure, when he marks how Seurat combines the billowing skirts and the lady’s bustle with the curve of her parasol and the rhythm of the tree trunks and notes the clever interplay of sunlit and shadowed surfaces on the leaves. All this unites in a cheerful summer pastorale as broad and peaceful as the river itself.

The happy colour harmony is effected with far fewer primary tones than is apparent at first glance. The painter attains a luminosity full of gaiety, chiefly by the subtlety of his arrangement of complementary reds and greens. This 2x3-meter painting is the painting when he returned to Nevertheless the first exhibition of usually considered to be Seurat’s Paris. The underlying brushstrokes this picture in 1886 was greeted masterpiece. It was while working are in his older balayé (sweeping) with more mockery than approval. on this painting that he developed style, with the pointillist stroke Few at that time would appreciate his pointillist technique, painting layered on top. The painting was the power of this artist who with unmixed dots of pure color in exhibited in May 1886 at the Eighth allowed himself to fix his figures varying sizes placed on the canvas Impressionist Exhibition. Like with architecturally in a Garden of to allow the colors to mix optically “Bathers,” Seurat’s studies included Eden, stretching in profile from when viewed. Seurat began work numerous paintings on panels and left to right and carried on in due on “Grande Jatte” after the 1884 drawings in crayon. hierarchy into the distance. But Independent Artists exhibition, what is lost in individual abandon visiting the Island of Grande Jatte — Carla Steen, production dramaturg by this process, is repaid a daily for six months, according to thousandfold in the “joie de vivre” his friend and fellow artist Paul One might call this “Sunday of the whole scene. Perhaps just Signac, to make his studies for the Afternoon” of Seurat’s more of a this was too much for the spirit of painting. In December of 1884, poem than a picture. Every life- the age to accept. he exhibited a 27x33-inch canvas like detail is bathed in a flood of landscape study for “Grande Jatte” sunlight, in which the figures have — Hermann Jedding, Gallery of Art Series, (plus some smaller panel studies) cast away their every day cares to “Seurat” with the Independent Artists, stroll, rest or take their pleasures and it appears the painting was on the banks of a river as full of joy finished in time to exhibit in March as they are themselves. It is true 1885, but the Independent Artists that the customs and fashions of cancelled the planned show. Seurat the age imposed certain restraints stepped away from working on the and conventions, such as the painting to spend the summer in parasols which protect the ladies’ Grandcamp then resumed work on complexions. But this “period

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THE MOVEMENT: where the individual colors would when they both exhibited at the NEO-IMPRESSIONISM both be more vibrant and create a first Salon of Independent Artists, mixing of the colors from a certain which was a direct response to the In the late 1870s and early 1880s, distance away. (For instance, yellow difficulty new artists had getting a new school of thought emerged and blue placed next to each other their works noticed. Signac was within the Impressionists. Led by would appear to create a more so taken with Seurat’s ideas that Seurat, its scientific, methodical vibrant green color from a certain he gradually “converted” to Neo- approach was a decided pushback distance.) In reality, the colors don’t Impressionism. Together, they against the individualistic, actually mix, but the method does were at the forefront of expanding spontaneous style of the create a luminescent/vibratory the movement further both Impressionists. Seurat approached effect in the painting, which more geographically and artistically. his art from a scientific, theory- realistically portrays light as it is Seurat and Signac were invited to based standpoint. He studied color in life. To the Neo-Impressionists, exhibit in Brussels in 1886, where theory extensively, particularly the separating colors into the hues that Neo-Impressionism later became theories developed by American made them creates more “light” in the major artistic movement. physicist and amateur painter a painting and avoids the dullness The eighth and final Impressionist Ogden Rood. He was also inspired that came from blending colors Exhibition took place in by the French Romantic artist manually. 1886, and Seurat and Signac Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) and participated, showcasing their the analysis of Delacroix’s work with Neo-Impressionists at first self- Scientific Impressionist works. color by art historian Charles Blanc. identified asImpressionistes However, their inclusion in this scientifiques as opposed to the exhibition resulted in many of This pushback was largely against Impressionistes romantiques the Romantic Impressionists the formlessness and ambivalence whose ideas they were building on. refusing to participate, as they of Impressionism. Although the Science dominated over emotion did not believe that Seurat and Impressionists ultimately were in their techniques, or science was Signac were representative of successful in breaking through the vehicle by which emotion was their spontaneous, emotionally- the accepted norms of painting, expressed. Key to Seurat’s later driven Impressionist art. This was focusing art on the modern world work in Neo-Impressionism was his the exhibition in which “Sunday and opening the door for new study of lines and their associations Afternoon on the Island of La forms of art to be developed, with emotion. He worked on Grande Jatte” was shown, and there was no unified artistic inciting emotions in the viewer by the critical response largely statement being made, particularly using specific line direction and agreed that Seurat’s work was a because the artists who were shape in concert with his vibrant redevelopment of or next step taking part in it applied the “rules” colors. Specifically, it was believed beyond Impressionism. of impressionism with varying that upward-moving lines and Seurat was at the forefront degrees of strictness. Seurat, on warm colors could be used to of Neo-Impressionism, and it the other hand, wanted to theorize express activity and feelings of joy, essentially died out with no everything about his art to create a whereas downward-moving lines further advancements being made “formula” for painting. In a dramatic and cooler colors would express upon his death in 1891. Neo- contrast to the Impressionists, he stillness and melancholy. This was Impressionism did tangentially was more interested in using the not “new” theory when Seurat lead to other artistic movements, contemporary science available to was experimenting with it—it such as Post-Impressionism (think him to create something enduring, had been around informally and Picasso and Van Gogh) and the rather than focusing on the fleeting without formula for centuries—but avant garde. It would have a moment. his attempt to create rules about passing influence on other artists the movements of lines and colors such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Using Rood’s theories of light speaks to his attempt to approach and Paul Gauguin. and complementary color, Seurat painting from a completely developed his own painting scientific standpoint for optimal — Emily Gustafson, currently an intern in the theories. Rood believed that results. Literary Department placing contrasting colors next to each other resulted in a genuine Seurat met Paul Signac, a student mélange optique (optical mixing) of the Impressionist school, in 1884

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ELEMENTS AND Balance. Light. And harmony.” mix of a primary and secondary. PRINCIPLES OF ART (George, act one) Complementary colors are directly mentioned by the Georges across from each other on the color (and Jules) in the play Order wheel [next page] and contrast Arrangement, often methodical; well because they have no common Design related to composition. colors. The creative idea or plan the artist “Color and light. / There’s only intends to execute in a work of art; Tone color and light.” (George, act one) conveys intentionality and creation The lightness or darkness of an (to design – an action) in addition object. Seurat’s black Conté crayon Perspective to the way components are put drawings create forms through Putting objects on a two- together (the design – a thing). layers of tone – more crayon is dimensional surface so they convey darker, less is lighter and a form is a sense of proportion, position and Composition distinguished only through light distance which relates to how they The way a work of art is organized, and dark (not line or color). Tone would look in three dimensions. arranged or structured to provide can also refer to color (light or Jules is also referring to Seurat’s to the viewer with the most clarity dark) and can relate to hue (the ability to look at the canvas with the information the artist wants to spectrum of red, yellow, green, enough distance to be able to convey. blue, etc.). A warm or cool tone evaluate the painting’s perspective. relates to hue; a dark or light tone “It is so large. How can you get any Balance refers to brightness. perspective?” (Jules, act one) The way the various elements of art – line, shape, form, color, Form Tension etc. – are distributed in a work of A shape that conveys three- Cnflict created by the interplay of art, ideally conveying a feeling dimensionality (ball vs. circle). Can the various elements of art, keeping of equilibrium or stability. Can be be geometrical or free-flowing. the piece interesting. Tension symmetrical (similar on both sides), might be created by the pairing of asymmetrical (different on each Symmetry opposites (hard-soft, straight-curvy, side but still feels balanced) or An element of balance in which light-dark, loud-soft, big-small, radial (arranged around a central elements are placed with exact or good-evil). Tension can complicate point). similar distribution on opposite a viewer’s reaction to the art, which parts. is good, and keeps it from being Light “Order. Design. Composition. boring. Neutral compositions lack Light triggers the ability to see, Tone. Form. Symmetry. Balance.” tension and are therefore often dull. reveals texture, form and contour, (George, act one) “Order. Design. Tension. Balance. affects the quality and value of Harmony.” (George, act one) color. Through pointillism (the Color technique of applying paint in dots) The constituents into which light — Carla Steen, production dramaturg and divisionism (applying colors can be divided in a spectrum or separately onto the canvas so they rainbow. White is pure light; black mix optically upon viewing), Seurat is the absence of light. Color as hoped to capture in paint the an element of art is composed of luminosity, vibration and brilliance hue, value and intensity. Hue is the of light as seen in nature. name of the color (red, blue, yellow, green, etc.). Value, like tone, relates Harmony to how light or dark it is – the hue Combining the elements of changes with the addition of white art so they work together and or black. And intensity is the quality complement each other to form of brightness or dullness. a consistent and orderly whole. Primary colors (red, yellow, blue) “When paintings are done right, are the only true colors. Everything harmony appears by itself,” said is a mix of those three. Cezanne. Secondary colors are a mix of two “Through design. Composition. primary colors. Tertiary colors are a

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 15 PARIS IN THE 1880S new Assembly was dominated by service was established. In 1878, conservative royalists. Republicans the Republic held an International During the Second Empire (1852- in Paris feared the monarchy Exposition that proved vastly 1870), Paris underwent substantial would be restored and objected more successful than the previous urban renewal. Boulevards were to the dishonorable terms of the two held in the country under the widened, streetlamps added (to subsequent treaty with Germany. Orleans monarchy and Second create the “city of lights”), new So a rebel faction established – Empire. In 1879, the capital was aqueducts and sewers built, the through city elections and control moved from Versailles back to Louvre was completed, six major of the National Guard’s cannons in Paris. railway stations constructed, the city – yet another government many suburbs were annexed to called the Paris Commune During the 1880s, when Seurat the city proper, huge parks were which hearkened back to the was most actively painting, the built, and more. The population revolutionary ideals of 1789. The government was under the control boomed, though most of the Versailles government put down of a moderate and cautious branch newcomers settled in first-ring the Commune in what is now called of republicans. Free, secular, suburbs because the city center “the Week of Blood,” in which mandatory primary education itself lost substantial housing to 20,000 or more Parisians were for boys and girls to age 13 was these changes. By 1869, the major killed (compared to 2,600 in Paris established, suffrage was given to cities of France were connected during the 16-month Reign of Terror all men (not women), and French by rail, the production of coal, in the previous century). Parts colonialism created the beginnings iron and steel boomed, and the of the city were burned by both of the French empire. Secondary financial system was overhauled sides, and a particular bourgeois- school, such as the art school and stabilized. proletariat divide was revealed. Seurat attended, remained largely a The fall of the Paris Commune also bourgeois opportunity, but in 1880 In 1870, the Second Empire wiped out the major leaders of the the first secondary schools for girls collapsed, in part because of the socialist and labor factions and were established. Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). left the working class feeling more Hoping to secure South German alienated than before; this vacuum Army activity during the 1880s states as part of a united Germany, was filled by Marxists in the 1880s, included military support for Prussian chancellor Otto von which culminated in the founding in ongoing colonization, specifically Bismarck provoked France into 1889 of the Second International (or using Algeria as a base to declaring war. Sure enough, the Socialist International), a federation make expeditions into Tunisia, southern states saw France as the of socialist parties and trade unions the exploration of Congo and aggressor and came to Prussia’s that shaped the labor movement its subsequent establishment aid. Emperor Napoleon III thought until World War I. as a French protectorate, and the recently reorganized French expansion of French control in army could defeat the Prussians, France’s defeat by Prussia meant Vietnam so that by 1883 the French but France was slow to mobilize it was no longer the dominant protectorates of Tonkin and Annam and disorganized. The primary power in Europe; Germany joined the already-established fighting lasted less than two completed its unification, including French colony around Saigon. months, and Napoleon surrendered the annexation of Alsace and In 1881, new laws secured liberties in early September. But a resistance half of Lorraine from France. restricted by old Empire laws: movement in Paris declared the But the Third Republic was cafes and bars could be opened emperor deposed, established a established, and after some fits (previously they’d been subject republic (the Third) and carried and starts as monarchists and to the whim of local officials), on fighting. The Prussians began republicans continued to grapple and these businesses became a siege of Paris and the city finally for control, a new constitution hangouts for political discussions surrendered in January 1871. was adopted in 1875, creating a and meetings, such as those The peace terms included plans two-house legislature, council of Seurat attended for the Society to elect a new French National ministers and a president. With of Independent Artists. Public Assembly in Versailles (so there this new government in place, the assembly and freedom of the press would be a government to National Assembly was dissolved. were also enacted in law. In 1884, negotiate the treaty, among other Industrialization flourished divorce and trade unions were things; this also moved the capital (captured in some of Seurat’s also legalized. But laborers still from Paris to Versailles), but the paintings) and a professional civil had to carry the “worker passport”

16 \ GUTHRIE THEATER enacted in 1803, which had to be republican system, in place since presented like a travel document 1870, which had kept both royalists and effectively could control the and Bonapartists at bay. Gustave movement and schedule of the Eiffel won a contest to design a working class. monument to mark the occasion, and between 1887 and 1889, his In 1883, the final Bourbon claimant 300-meter tower of iron was to the throne died, and in 1886 constructed. members of the remaining former ruling families – Bonaparte and — Carla Steen, production dramaturg Orleans – were banished from France. In 1889, Paris hosted its fourth International Exposition, which was to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution and to celebrate the

The cast of the Guthrie Theater’s production of Sunday in the Park with George

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 17 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

For Further Understanding

BY STEPHEN SONDHEIM ABOUT IMPRESSIONISM / AND JAMES LAPINE NEO-IMPRESSIONISM

Look, I Made a Hat by Stephen Impressionism, Fashion & Sondheim Modernity edited by Gloria Groom Twelve Dreams by James Lapine Neo-Impressionism by Robert L. Table Settings by James Lapine Herbert Into the Woods by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim FRANCE Passion by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim France Since 1870 by Charles Sowerwine Eiffel’s Tower by Jill Jonnes ABOUT STEPHEN SONDHEIM Third Republic in France 1870-1940 by William Fortescue Art Isn’t Easy: The Theater of Paris, Capital of Modernity by Stephen Sondheim by Joanne David Harvey Gordon Sondheim & Co. by Craig Zadan ABOUT MODERN ART Sondheim by Meryle Secrest Sondheim on Music: Minor Details What Are You Looking At? and Major Decisions by Mark Eden The Surprising, Shocking and Horowitz Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art by Will Gompertz ABOUT GEORGES SEURAT “The Most Iconic Artists of the 1980s,” by George Philip Seurat by Richard Thomson Lebourdais, Artsy, August 17, 2015 Georges Seurat: 1859-1891 by Robert L. Herbert Seurat catalog from Kröller-Müller Museum Georges Seurat by John Rewald Seurat: A Biography by John Rewald Seurat in Perspective edited by Norma Broude

ABOUT “SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE”

Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte by Robert L. Herbert

18 \ GUTHRIE THEATER