Desire Caught by the Tail
Sunday 21 August 2016, 4.30–6pm V22 Louise House
Directed by Cradeaux Alexander, LUXE premieres Desire Caught by the Tail, a rarely-produced play by Pablo Picasso.
Written in Paris in 1941 under the Occupation, Desire Caught by the Tail had its first public reading in 1944, which was directed and produced by Albert Camus and featured performances by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Leiris, and Raymond Queneau among others.
With characters including The Tart, The Onion, Big Foot, Thin Anxiety and Silence, Picasso’s play is a play of misery, discomfort, anguish, hunger and passion which is caught in the impossibility of its fulfilment. It is bawdy, burlesque, outrageous and funny, with a lyrical spoken language which incorporates high poetics and absurdist juxtapositions.
LUXE is pleased to premiere this largely unknown theatrical gem to London audiences. In 2016 we are faced with a multitude of complex positions and relationships within modern warfare, nationalism and social battlegrounds. The absurdity of annihilation is a constant thread in Picasso’s 1941 play; as such it remains chillingly and determinedly relevant to us all in 2016.
Cradeaux Alexander is a visual artist, performer and director. Originally from Los Angeles, he has studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute (Performance) in New York, and has degrees in fine art from Chelsea College of Art (BA) and Royal College of Art (MA) in London. He is currently a researcher at Royal College of Art, researching a practice-based PhD with a focus on performance and the event. He is also the Artistic Director of LUXE, a UK-registered charity making and presenting new works of performance and theatre. His work has been shown in the USA, the UK and Japan in museums, galleries and theatres including Freud Museum, The Chelsea Theatre, Dilston Grove, Testbed Gallery, and Tokyo Wondersite. His work has been granted awards by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, The Peg Santvoord Foundation and The Editch C. Blum Foundation.
Venue info
V22 Louise House
Dartmouth Road
Forest Hill
London
SE23 3HZ
(Between Forest Hill Pools and Forest Hill Library)
Overground: Forest Hill
Bus: 122, 176, 197
