Steve Martin to the Rescue

We have seen in our own county how a small group of radicals can hold the school district hostage. Out in Oregon this happened, but luckily there is a way to carry on even over the objections of the whiners critics.

Steve Martin has offered to pay for an off-campus production of his play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," which the school board banned from La Grande High School because parents objected to what they called adult content.

The actor, comedian, art collector and banjo picker says in a letter to the community that he wants to keep the play, conducted in other high schools without controversy, "from acquiring a reputation it does not deserve."

The 1993 play imagines a meeting between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein in a Paris bar as they are on the verge of great achievements in painting and physics.

It is aimed at explaining "the similarity of the creative process involved in great leaps of imagination in art and science," as the letter (HERE) published Friday in The La Grande Observer put it.

Last month a parent objected to the production planned by teacher Kevin Cahill and gave school officials a petition signed by 137 people. The school board halted rehearsals. Steve Martin to pay for banned La Grande High School play [Links edited for clarity]

The Student Democrats in La Grande raised some money to move the play to the local college, and Steve Martin will contribute.

His letter to the newspaper makes for some good reading. Here it is in its entirety:

To the citizens of La Grande:

It has come to my attention that there is a controversy regarding my play, “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” which was to be produced at your local high school.

First let me compliment Mr. Kevin Cahill, the teacher who selected the play, on his excellent taste! The play has been performed, without incident, all over the world by professional and amateur companies, including many high schools.

Because I don’t know the standards of your community or the life experience of your students, it is impossible for me to address whether my play is appropriate to be performed on campus, although in the limited web exchanges I have read, the students, and the eloquent Mr. Cahill, seem to understand the play and can discern that the questionable behavior sometimes evident in the play is not endorsed.

I have heard that some in your community have characterized the play as “people drinking in bars, and treating women as sex objects.” With apologies to William Shakespeare, this is like calling Hamlet a play about a castle. This play is set in an actual bar in Paris that was frequented by Picasso, a historical site that still exists today.

Focusing on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Picasso’s master painting, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” the play attempts to explain, in a light-hearted way, the similarity of the creative process involved in great leaps of imagination in art and science. Pablo Picasso, as a historical figure, does not come gift-wrapped for the sensitive. He lived as he painted, fully sexual and fully daring, and in the play he is chastised by a sage bartendress for his cavalier behavior toward women.

Because of the controversy, I recently reread the play, and, frankly, I could understand how some parents might object to certain lines if they were to be delivered by a 16- or 17-year-old. Yet I do believe that the spirit of the play and its endorsement of the arts and sciences are appropriate for young eyes and minds.

So while the question of whether students should perform the play at their high school remains something to be determined by the community, I firmly believe that seeing the play will bring no harm to them and might well uplift them — and acting in the play, if they are permitted by their parents, would also bring them no harm, and may help them to understand the potency, power and beauty of the arts and sciences.

I suspect that the signers of the petition against the production read excerpts only, and were not shown the more delicate and inspirational parts of the script.

To prevent the play from acquiring a reputation it does not deserve, I would like to offer this proposal: I will finance a non-profit, off-high school campus production (low-budget, I hope!), supervised and/or directed by Mr. Cahill and cast at his discretion, so that individuals, outside the jurisdiction of the school board but within the guarantees of freedom of expression provided by the Constitution of the United States, can determine whether they will or will not see the play, even if they are under 18.

I predict that the experience will not be damaging, but meaningful.

Steve Martin wrote the play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.’’ He is an actor and comedian. Of arts and sciences

I thought that was a perfect response. He doesn't want to tell the people of La Grande what to do, if their school board is afraid of the local nuts, well, the people get what they asked for. At the same time, he doesn't want his play to get a reputation for being pornographic or objectionable. It is good enough to be produced everywhere else, including in high schools, and he will invest a little to make sure it gets produced in La Grande, too.

I wrote a couple of years ago about a television show that received eleven thousand complaints. Only two of the people who complained had actually seen the show. In fact, the show was a rerun, and in its first viewing the FCC received zero complaints about it -- none. Some nutty group had emailed all their members to complain, and that was what happened. The network was fined more than three million dollars as a result.

Same thing here. Steve Martin's play has shown all over the place, but some nutty citizen got a bug up their butt and ran around with petitions, and the school board showed no spine. According to the script, the kids should have been out of luck, play canceled, that's it. But first student volunteers started raising money to solve the problem, and now the author of the play is going to help out, too, and I expect the production will have a much larger audience than it would have. So there.