Picasso’s Closet: The Independent Interview with Ariel Dorfman
I spoke with Ariel Dorfman about his play, Picasso’s Closet, for about 45 minutes in his office at the John Hope Franklin Institute at Duke, at midday on Oct. 13, 2009. Nasher Museum of Art will present a staged reading of the play in conjunction with its Picasso and the Allure of Language exhibit, Oct. 29-31, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at the Duke Box Office website.
Independent: This must be a difficult script to produce.
Ariel Dorfman (Photo by D.L. Anderson)
Ariel Dorfman: This is an experimental play. Let’s say I’ve tried to do, modestly, in theater with time what Picasso does with space—which is to create many perspectives and break down the barriers of identity. Therefore it verges between the popular and the experimental.
As different characters place their viewpoints one after another, there are these interstitial planes of reality coming at each other…
Most biopics, say, tend to be rather linear. Or at least they go back and forth—childhood to adulthood to childhood to adulthood—
—the narrative of ping pong—
—and they’re very predictable in that sense.
I said to myself, “How can I possibly write a play about Picasso as if Picasso’s art had never existed?” It had to be influenced by Picasso; the greatest homage to him is really not the character on stage, but the art with which he’s being portrayed. It’s a post-Picasso play, whereas most plays about Picasso I’ve seen—most plays about artists I’ve seen—tend to act as if the artist had not influenced them at all.
