PLAY GUIDE About ATC 1 Introduction to the Play 2 Meet the Characters 2 Meet the Playwright 4 Behind the Scenes: An Interview with Herbert Siguenza 5 Picasso: The Artist 7 Picasso’s Who’s Who 10 Picasso’s Women 11 A World View 13 Glossary 15 Discussion Questions and Activities 16 A Weekend with Pablo Picasso Play Guide written and compiled by Katherine Monberg, ATC Literary Associate, with assistance from April Jackson, Education Manager; Luke Young, Education Associate; Natasha Smith, Artistic and Playwriting Intern; Kalan Benbow and Skye Westberg, Literary Interns SUPPORT FOR ATC’S EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY PROGRAMMING HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY: APS Rosemont Copper Arizona Commission on the Arts Stonewall Foundation Bank of America Foundation Target Blue Cross Blue Shield Arizona The Boeing Company City Of Glendale The Donald Pitt Family Foundation Community Foundation for Southern Arizona The Johnson Family Foundation, Inc Cox Charities The Lovell Foundation Downtown Tucson Partnership The Marshall Foundation Enterprise Holdings Foundation The Maurice and Meta Gross Foundation Ford Motor Company Fund The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation The Stocker Foundation JPMorgan Chase The William L and Ruth T Pendleton Memorial Fund John and Helen Murphy Foundation Tucson Medical Center National Endowment for the Arts Tucson Pima Arts Council Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture Wells Fargo PICOR Charitable Foundation ABOUT ATC Arizona Theatre Company is a professional, not-for-profit theatre company This means all of our artists, administrators and production staff are paid professionals, and the income we receive from ticket sales and contributions goes right back into our budget to create our work, rather than to any particular person as a profit Each season, ATC employs hundreds of actors, directors and designers from all over the country to create the work you see on stage In addition, ATC currently employs about 100 staff members in our production shops and administrative offices in Tucson and Phoenix during our season Among these people are carpenters, painters, marketing professionals, fundraisers, stage directors, sound and light board operators, tailors, costume designers, box office agents, stage crew – the list is endless – representing an amazing range of talents and skills We are also supported by a Board of Trustees, a group of business and community leaders who volunteer their time and expertise to assist the theatre in financial and legal matters, advise in marketing and fundraising, and help represent the theatre in our community Roughly 150,000 people attend our shows every year, and several thousand of those people support us with charitable contributions in addition to purchasing their tickets Businesses large and small, private foundations and the city and state governments also support our work financially All of this is in support of our vision and mission: OUR VISION IS TO TOUCH LIVES THROUGH THE POWER OF THEATRE. Our mission is to create professional theatre that continually strives to reach new levels of artistic excellence and that resonates locally, in the state of Arizona and throughout the nation In order to fulfill our mission, the theatre produces a broad repertoire ranging from classics to new works, engages artists of the highest caliber, and is committed to assuring access to the broadest spectrum of citizens The Temple of Music and Art, the home of ATC shows in downtown Tucson The Herberger Theater Center, ATC’s performance venue in downtown Phoenix 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY A Weekend with Pablo Picasso By Herbert Siguenza Based on the writings of Pablo Picasso Directed by Todd Salovey The work of Pablo Picasso forever changed the way that the world looks at art This one-man show, written by and starring the astonishing actor and artist Herbert Siguenza, will forever change the way that you think about Picasso In a performance that explodes with color, Picasso’s most intimate thoughts rip through the air with each thundering brushstroke as Siguenza creates six new masterpieces live on stage in this Arizona premiere Herbert Siguenza in Arizona Theatre Company’s production of “Action is the foundation to all success Do not try, DO! Do not seek, FIND!” A Weekend with Pablo Picasso. Photo by Darren Scott – Picasso, A Weekend with Pablo Picasso MEET THE CHARACTERS Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso’s full name, which honors a variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso Picasso’s mother was Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez and his father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and art teacher A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the young Picasso possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes that seemed to mark him destined for greatness “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope,’” he later recalled “Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso ” Pablo Picasso. Though he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a prodigious talent for drawing at a very young age According to legend, his first words were “piz, piz,” his childish attempt at saying “lápiz,” the Spanish word for pencil Picasso’s father began teaching him to draw and paint when he was a child, and by the time he was 13 years old, his skill level had surpassed his father’s Soon, Picasso lost all desire to do any schoolwork, choosing to spend the school days doodling in his notebook instead “For being a bad student, I was banished to the ‘calaboose,’ a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on,” he later remembered “I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly ... I could have stayed there forever, drawing without stopping ” In 1895, when Picasso was 14 years old, he moved with his family to Barcelona, Spain, where he applied to the city’s prestigious School of Fine Arts Although the school typically only accepted students several years his senior, Picasso’s Picasso in his studio, La Californie, in Cannes, France entrance exam was so extraordinary that he was granted an exception and admitted Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the School of Fine Arts’ strict rules and formalities, and began skipping class so that he could roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed 2 In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando However, he again became frustrated with his school’s singular focus on classical subjects and techniques During this time, he wrote to a friend: “They just go on and on about the same old stuff: Velázquez for painting, Michelangelo for sculpture ” Once again, Picasso began skipping class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars and prostitutes, among other things In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats (“The Four Cats”) Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Pablo Picasso (in the beret) and scene painters sitting on the front Picasso made his decisive break from the classical methods in which he cloth for the ballet Parade, staged by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets had been trained, and began what would become a lifelong process of Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, 1917 Photo by Lachmann experimentation and innovation At the turn of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso moved to Paris, France – the cultural center of European art – to open his own studio Art critics and historians typically break Picasso’s adult career into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to 1904 and is called his “Blue Period,” after the color that dominated nearly all of Picasso’s paintings over these years Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend, Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and anguish, almost exclusively in shades of blue and green By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome the depression that had previously debilitated him Not only was he madly in love with a beautiful model, Fernande Olivier, he was newly prosperous thanks to the generous patronage of art dealer Ambroise Vollard The artistic manifestation of Picasso’s Francoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso celebrate his 70th birthday improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors – including beiges, pinks and reds – in what is known as his “Rose Period ” In 1907, Pablo Picasso produced a painting unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before, a work that would profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century:Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a chilling depiction of five nude prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays Today, Les Demoiselles is considered the precursor and inspiration of cubism, an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and his friend and fellow painter, Georges Braque The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great change in Picasso’s art He grew more somber and, once again, became preoccupied with the depiction of reality He briefly joined the Russian Ballet in 1917, designing sets for the balletParade by his friend and fellow artist Jean Cocteau There Picasso met and fell in love with ballerina Olga Khokhlova, whom he married in 1918 upon his return