Photograph
Written by Gertrude Stein
Directed by James Lapine
A staged adaptation of Gertrude Stein’s three-page poem that she wrote in 1920. This was the first play Lapine ever directed. Photograph is separated into five sections of varying length that are labeled “acts,” though one is only two lines long. Stein was thinking about cinema and photography of the time and the ways media was being viewed on a large scale. The play explores technological and biological reproduction via the theme of twinning or juxtaposing commonplaces in improbable ways.
Photograph
The Open Space
September 15th, 1977 - October 2nd, 1977
This production was first performed at Yale School of Drama and then transferred to The Open Space for a three-week run.
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By Gertrude Stein
Directed by James Lapine
Costume Design by Maureen Connor
Lighting Design by Paul Gallo
Original Music by Dwight Andrews
Associate Producer: Asante Scott
Assistant Producer: Grace Moore
Production Supervisor: Jennifer Hershey
Assistant Director: Craig Latrell
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with Gwendolyn Hardwick, Elaine Hartnett, Gabrielle Olejniczak, Gloria Pilot, Robert Road, Neil Sawyet, Pamela Smith, Michael Stumm, and Evelyn Teploff
Awards, Reviews & Features
1978 Obie Awards
Special Citation Winner: James Lapine for Photograph
“It is a lovely and remarkably successful attempt to render the qualities of Gertrude Stein in theatrical terms… throughout there is a lovely humaneness, a delicacy toward the images and toward the audience, whose possible bewilderment in the face of an elliptic and abstract work is allayed with the old theatrical resources of humor, variety and a pace that respects the human capacity to sit still. I think Gertrude Stein would have been delighted.”