Theater Abroad: Desire Under the Tent

Pablo Picasso should have stuck to painting. Back in 1941, he wrote a play called Le Desir Attrape par la Queue (Desire Caught by the Tail). It was a jumble of absurdist fantasies, peo pled with characters named Big Foot, Fat Anxiety, Thin Anguish, Round End and Onion. There was no plot — just a splattering stream of Freudian chaos, a surrealistic carnival revue dwelling on food, money and sex. Le Desir was per formed twice, by experimental theaters in Manhattan and Vienna; shortly after the play was written, a cast headed...

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