New York Production
- Published by: Playscripts.com
- Featured in Women Playwrights: Best Plays of 2002 (Smith and Kraus) with excerpt below.
REVIEWS
“Cathy Caplan’s play wastes no time on strident polemics and feminist hagiography. “Lapis Blue Blood red has the tautness of a “Law and Order” episode as it moves back and forth between 1612 Rome and 1638 Naples, looking at the circumstances of Artemisia’s deflowering and public disgrace, her tense relations with her father, Orazio, and daughter, Prudenza, and the determination, pragmatism and sheer talent that let her earn her own living as a painter.”
Wall Street Journal
February 13, 2002
“…a vivid, challenging production by the Juggernaut Theatre Company. The story has plenty of modern day resonance. The rape trial sounds much like one that might take place now, and the parent-child wars are awfully familiar. “Stand up when you paint”, Orazio hounds his daughter. You’re crunched over, like a hunchback” he could be a suburban soccer dad. Ms. Caplan goes for a “like father, like daughter” theme, among others. There is a sublime moment when the grown Artemisia finds herself yelling at her father with the exact words her father once used against her.”
Neil Genzlinger New York Times
February 18, 2002
“Meg Gibson, who plays the 17thcentury painter Artemisia Gentileschi at age 45 is a volcanic, dark-eyed presence begrimed with sweat and paint, Gibson displays a diligence about her canvas and a bone weariness about her past that together speak eloquently about the artist hard won independence.”
David Cote Time Out February 14-21, 2002
“Ms. Caplan’s script is a nuanced treatment that doesn’t attempt to flesh out the existing history so much as set a human story in an historic/artistic framework.”
Michael Fressola Staten Island Advance
February 15, 2002
Women Playwrights: Best Plays of 2002 (Smith and Kraus)
Lapis Blue Blood Red
by Cathy Caplan
Published by: Playscripts.com
(Excerpt from the introduction to “Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002″. Edited by D.L Lepidus. A Smith and Kraus Book)
While writing the play, I was called for jury duty. Every day I’d report in and I’d move round to the different floors, looking for rape cases in progress. Usually there were one or two. The sex crimes officer is the modern equivalent of the notary in Artemisia’s time. He takes the victim’s testimony in private and then presents her often disturbing, personal, and graphic description in the public courtroom, which he reads in a monotone, expressionless voice. I realized most date rapes have no witness, both now and four hundred years ago. The victim’s case rests on character and credible narrative. Just as the lawyers have to create a believable story with very little evidence to convince the jury, I had to sift through contradictory testimonies to create a plausible story of Artemisia’s entanglement with Agostino.
I went to Rome and visited the prison where Artemisia’s alleged rapist Agostino Tassi was eventually incarcerated. Because it was a Sunday, the jail, now a museum, was closed. The guard agreed to let me in, on condition that my son and husband wait outside. He closed the heavy wooden door and took me upstairs to show me the jail cells and various instruments of torture. While alone in one of the cells, he pressed me up against the wall. I quickly pushed him aside and made my way back downstairs. ( I was nearly twice his height) and started banging on the heavy wooden door. For a moment the past and present had collided. I was happy to see the faces of my son and husband waiting in the street.