French-American artist Marcel Duchamp sent shockwaves through the art world in 1917 when he bought a urinal at a New York City plumbing supply store, turned the porcelain piece on its back, signed it “R. Mutt,” claimed it was a “readymade” sculpture that he titled “Fountain,” and submitted it for an exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists.
Duchamp’s stunt-cum-artwork wasn’t the first time, nor the last, that humankind has been confronted by that age-old question: “What makes art art?”
City Repertory Theatre will be jumping into that fray when it stages “Art,” the 1994 comedy by French playwright Yasmina Reza, at its Palm Coast black box venue from March 20-29.
Reza’s work, which won the Tony Award for Best Play after opening on Broadway in 1998, follows the upheaval among three longtime friends when Samantha, a dermatologist (played by Julia Truilo), buys a pricey, virtually all-white painting. Sam becomes befuddled, despondent and eventually angry after Rae (played by Bethany Stillion) calls the artwork a “piece of white shit.” Yvonne, the third friend (played by Sue Pope), attempts to play peacemaker and ameliorate the friction between her two “besties.”
The City Rep production, the latest in the troupe’s now-annual tradition of honoring Women’s History Month, may mark the first time Reza’s play has been staged with an all-female cast: Neither Truilo nor director John Sbordone could find any online evidence that a female version has been presented before. All three actors boast extensive CRT and-or regional theatrical credits.
“Supposedly this play is based on something that actually happened to Yasmina Reza,” Truilo says. “A friend bought something and she laughed. While the friend reacted well to her laughter, it occurred to Reza as a playwright what would happen if she hadn’t – what if the friend had been offended, what would have happened? Hence the play.”
Such “What makes art art?” moments have likely occurred ever since Og the Neanderthal Caveman first scribble-carved lines on the walls of his cave home, no doubt leading his successors, the Cro-Magnon artists of ancient France’s Lascaux Cave – veritable Paleolithic Picassos – to figuratively proclaim “Og, you call that art? This is art!”
Flash forward to French poet-playwright Paul Bilhaud’s 1882 painting, “Combat de Nègres Pendant la Nuit (“Battle of Negroes During the Night”): Whether one sees that piece as a tasteless joke or as a downright racist endeavor, it was the first of several all-black paintings conjured by various artists over the next several decades.
No doubt Og would have said “I can do that!” if he had witnessed pioneering abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock sloshing paint onto canvases in the 1930s.
Music got into the act in 1952 when the Zen Buddhist-influenced composer John Cage created . . . er, conceived his work “4’33,” a piece of music (?) in which a performer sits at a piano for four minutes and 33 seconds and makes no attempt whatsoever to play the keyboard. The ambient, incidental sounds of the concert hall – patrons coughing, feet shuffling, a truck passing by outside – becomes the performance.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan pulled a Duchamp when he created “Comedian,” a common banana duct-taped to a wall, at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019. Even though another artist grabbed that banana and ate it, a subsequent version sold for $6.2 million at a New York auction in 2024.
Truilo sees a difference between the Dada-esque urinals and bananas of the art world and the fictional painting of Reza’s play (which was created by CRT veteran actor Phillipa Rose).
“There is a relationship with that outre artistic expression, but I think the real difference is there is a construction here,” she says of the play’s artwork. “Go online and google ‘white painting images.’ That is an entire genre – there are a lot of white paintings out there. I think white paintings are an attempt to describe a void. If you bring all color together, it’s white. So it’s a void of its own.”
Of course, Reza’s play examines more than the aesthetics and merits of abstract, conceptual and possibly bullshit art. Though a comedy, it explores the sometimes byzantine, sometimes hidden tensions buried in friendships.
“Each character has a painting that kind of acts as a stand-in for their worldview,” Stillion says. “For my character Rae, it’s a romantic landscape, unlike Sam’s, which is a challenging piece, without form and color – those old chestnuts.
“Rae feels that Sam’s new painting is a joke and should be viewed as a joke, which Sam takes very much to heart in an offended way.”
Pope says her character, Yvonne, “doesn’t hate the painting, but she doesn’t necessarily like it either. I’m just trying to split the middle. I’m a people pleaser. I don’t like conflict. I don’t want any arguments. My character is described as always being a jokester. I’m muddling through life as best I can. She says about herself that she farted around for 40 years but she’s finally going to make a commitment.”
“Reza set up personalities that easily conflict,” Sbordone says. “In many ways the painting is a prize poodle – it could be anything. Sam loves this thing so much. She doesn’t know why Rae won’t like it, why Rae won’t give in to the fact that Sam likes it so much. There’s this whole jealousy angle that’s woven underneath a lot of the comedy.”
And how does the gender-reversal affect this play – or does it?
“The conversation is in fact very female in tone,” Truilo says.
“I think it should be done by women,” Stillion says. “I don’t know why it hasn’t been done before, because once you read it that way it’s like, ‘Oh, of course.’ ”
–Rick de Yampert for FlaglerLive
City Repertory Theatre will stage “Art” at 7:30 p.m. March 20-21 and March 27-28, and at 3 p.m. March 22 and 29. Performances will be in CRT’s black box theater at City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B207, Palm Coast. Tickets are $25 adults and $15 students, available online at crtpalmcoast.com or by calling 386-585-9415. Tickets also will be available at the venue just before curtain time.
Leave a Reply