Picasso The Playwright

He was one of the most versatile and prolific artists of the 20th century, churning out more than 20,000 pieces of art during his lifetime, including paintings, sculptures, engravings, drawings and ceramics. But this week, a different side of Pablo Picasso is on show: the playwright. Sixty-six years after he wrote it, Picasso’s little-known play Desire Caught by the Tail is being staged in his native Spain for the first time - and for its first important worldwide run. The play had been read in wartime Paris in 1944, by a sampling of Picasso’s famous friends, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir. But, barring a few minor productions in the original French or translated into English, it faded largely into obscurity. The action takes place in a single room in Nazi-occupied Paris, where a group of artists takes refuge from deprivation through sex, cooking and poetry. As one might expect from a Picasso play, the dialogue is abstract and the action mostly absurd. Monologues go on for pages. "One of the strangest things I’ve read," concludes the only reviewer on Amazon.com. "This play is very weird." Irish Art