Picasso at the Lapin Agile Picasso at the Lapin Agile Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a full-length play written by American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and musician Steve Martin in 1993. The play features the characters of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, who meet at a bar called the Lapin Agile (French: "Nimble Rabbit") in Montmartre, Paris. It is set on October 8, 1904, and both men are on the verge of disclosing amazing ideas (Einstein will publish his special theory of relativity in 1905 and Picasso will paint "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" in 1907). At the Lapin Agile, they have a lengthy debate about
The Nature of Truth lies can skew our lives. Over dinner at the end of the novel, Jonathan Atwater—a gay librarian who, like a Jew victimized by Nazi storm troopers, was assaulted by homophobic thugs—presents his theory about the decline of civilization. "Two important things have gone by the wayside, in my opinion," he says, "and I believe they've affected each other in a miserable manner. Family and truth." According to Atwater, truth, disembodied from the living communities that give it meaning, has become a vapid abstraction. "The Nature of Truth" concludes within the embrace of la familia, in Chicano New Mexico. But ...