Desire Caught by the Tail
Encyclopedia
Desire Caught by the Tail is farcical play written by the painter Pablo Picasso
.
, Picasso while ill spent three days writing a play. Written in French, the piece was entitled Le Desire Attrape par la Queue, which translates literally to "Desire Caught by the Tail.". However, it was not until 1944 that it had its first audience when it was given a reading in the Paris apartment of Michel Leins. There the parts were read by such local literati as Simone de Beauvoir
, Jean-Paul Sartre
, Valentine Hugo
, Raymond Queneau
and Picasso himself. Albert Camus
directed the piece.
It premiered as a full staged production in 1967, in St. Tropez, France
. The show, which was rumored (falsely) to have actors urinating on stage, was protested despite the town’s generally tolerant reputation. The central prop was a large black box, which served as a bathtub, a coffin and a bed. It has been rarely produced since.
While the narrative is nonlinear and the meaning nearly impossible to decipher, the work has been praised despite (and sometimes for) its lack of message. Bernard Frechtman, who translated the work from the original French, writes in his forward, “It says nothing of human destiny or of the human condition. In an age which has discovered man with a capital M, it is gratifying to advise the reader that Picasso has nothing to say of man, nor of the universe. This in itself is a considerable achievement.”
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
.
History
In the winter of 1941, soon after the Germans had occupied ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Picasso while ill spent three days writing a play. Written in French, the piece was entitled Le Desire Attrape par la Queue, which translates literally to "Desire Caught by the Tail.". However, it was not until 1944 that it had its first audience when it was given a reading in the Paris apartment of Michel Leins. There the parts were read by such local literati as Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Valentine Hugo
Valentine Hugo
Valentine Hugo was an artist; she was born Valentine Gross in Boulogne-sur-Mer and died in Paris.Valentine studied painting in Paris, and in 1919 married French artist Jean Hugo , great-grandson of Victor Hugo...
, Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
and Picasso himself. Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
directed the piece.
It premiered as a full staged production in 1967, in St. Tropez, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. The show, which was rumored (falsely) to have actors urinating on stage, was protested despite the town’s generally tolerant reputation. The central prop was a large black box, which served as a bathtub, a coffin and a bed. It has been rarely produced since.
Description
Described as “surrealistic” and “simply weird,” the play is rarely produced due to sheer incomprehensibility. There is no plot to speak of. The play has abstractly named characters: besides the protagonist Big Foot and his love interest Tart, there are Onion, Round End, the Cousin, the two Bow-wows, Silence, Fat Anguish, Skinny Anguish and The Curtains. And the stage directions are highly impractical: the transparent doors light up and the dancing shadows of five monkeys eating carrots appear. Complete darkness.While the narrative is nonlinear and the meaning nearly impossible to decipher, the work has been praised despite (and sometimes for) its lack of message. Bernard Frechtman, who translated the work from the original French, writes in his forward, “It says nothing of human destiny or of the human condition. In an age which has discovered man with a capital M, it is gratifying to advise the reader that Picasso has nothing to say of man, nor of the universe. This in itself is a considerable achievement.”
Noteworthy productions
- Eye and Ear Theater, 1984. Two day production in New York.
- Envision Theatre, 2002. Produced as a radio broadcast in the U.K.
- banished? productions, 2006. D.C production featured characters portrayed by dancers and puppeteer-powered toilet bowls