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 For reprint permission, please contact: Carla Steen: 612.225.6118 Play guides are made possible by Guthrie Theater Study Guide Copyright 2017 DRAMATURG Carla Steen GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Graves RESEARCH Carla Steen and Emily Gustafson Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55415 All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Play Guide ADMINISTRATION 612.225.6000 may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic BOX OFFICE 612.377.2224 or 1.877.44.STAGE TOLL-FREE or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in guthrietheater.org • Joseph Haj, artistic director writing from the publishers. Some materials published herein are written especially for our Guide. Others are reprinted by permission of their publishers. The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is an American center for theater performance, The Guthrie Theater receives support from the National production, education and professional training. By presenting both classical literature and Endowment for the Arts. This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation new work from diverse cultures, the Guthrie illuminates the common humanity connecting by the Minnesota State Legislature. The Minnesota State Arts Board received additional funds to support this activity from Minnesota to the peoples of the world. the National Endowment for the Arts. 2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAY “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 GUTHRIE THEATER \ 3 THE PLAY 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. 4 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAY Scenes and Songs 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.