ART/WNY to Present PICASSO AT LAPIN AGILE, 3/5-28

American Repertory Theater of WNY will be presenting the third show of the 2014-15 season with Steve Martin's PICASSO AT LAPIN AGILE, March 5th and runs to March 28th at ART in the Box, 16 Linwood Avenue, Buffalo NY.

Known as an existential comedy, PICASSO AT LAPIN AGILE is Steve Martin's tongue-and-cheek poke at the deep philosophical pieces penned by French playwrights like Jean Paul Sartre or Eugene Ionesco. In this Victor Hugo a go-go knee-slapper, Martin creates an alternative universe where famed theoretical physicist Albert Einstein and famed theoretical romantic and painter Pablo Picasso meet at the Parisian bar Lapin Agile and wax philosophies, ponder existence, and, with help of a time-traveling "country boy", brave the new 20th century world and the future beyond.

PICASSO AT LAPIN AGUILE features a great cast and crew featuring Sean Marciniak as Picasso and Matthew Chavez as the famed Albert Einstein, Diane DiBernardo Blenk as the saucy bar-maid, Germain, with her bartender lover, Freddy, played by the versatile David Mitchell, Keith Wharton joins the company as Picasso's art dealer Sagot, Both Stefan Brundage and Eric Mowery make their ART/WNY debut with Stefan playing the big dreaming/no knowledge inventor Charles Dabernow Schmendiman as Mowery plays a simple country-boy Visitor. ART/WNY alumni Leacel Hillenbrand (THE CRUCIBLE) and Michael Leszczynski (SHINE) fill in as ensemble as Thomas Dooney makes his second appearance as director for this existential funny-bone tickler.

Known for his comedic genius from the SNL guest-host antics to strutting around as "the boy king", Steve Martin is debatably one of America's greatest post-modern comedians. An accomplished screen-play writer, PICASSO AT LAPIN AGILE, written in 1993, was one of Steve Martin's first full-length theatrical plays that would later include THE UNDERPANTS (2002). After workshopping the piece, including a private reading at Martin's home that included Tom Hanks, the work premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1993 before finding successful runs in Los Angeles and New York City.

PICASSO AT LAPIN AGILE takes place in 1904 with a whole world-wide was abuzz with prospects for the new century. Gay Paris was then home to some of the great minds and talents in science, the arts, business, politics, entertainment and social change. Unquestionably. Pablo Picasso, a barely known painter still a year away from his first abstract masterpieces, made his home in Paris and haunting in city drinking holes; one, in particular, is the famed Lapin Agile. In a night out in the City of Light, a young and humble clerk in a patent office, by the name of Albert who is on the verge of publishing a scientific revolutionary book with a recipe for "pie" , stumbles into this Paris bar on based on a scientific calculation.

At that time, Lapin Agile, (which still exists) was a crossroads of art and intellectual life in Montmartre. Over glasses of wine and absinthe artists and thinkers and inventors and performers would meet to talk and debate and, on any given night, anything might happen.

On this particular night, something indeed happened as the new century is discovered by two destine to be historical icons.

PICASSO AT LAPIN AGILE will be performed at ART InThe Box at 16 Linwood Avenue, in the basement of the historic Church Of TheAscension (at the corner of North Street and Linwood Avenue). Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Price of tickets is $25 General Admission/$20 Online, $18 Student and Military Veteran/$15 Online. For more information please visit www.artofwny.org or call ART/WNY's box office at 716 634 1102 (Mon-Fri, 9 am to 4:30 pm; Sat, noon to 4:30 pm).

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