Bauer
by Lauren Gunderson

Name: Bauer
Brand: Lauren Gunderson
SKU: 9780822233787
Rating: 3.73 (22 reviews)

Off-Broadway

Highlights

Female

Male

90 mins 1950s Interior Set Period Costumes

Synopsis

Bauer brings to the stage the true story of German painter Rudolf Bauer, who arrived in the US at the start of World War II.

Tricked by fellow German artist and the love of his life, Hilla von Rebay, he signed a contract giving legal rights in all his works – past, present and future – to Solomon R. Guggenheim, and his paintings were central in the formation of the Guggenheim Foundation.

Bauer tells of a painter who does not want to paint, exploring this despair as well as the depths of betrayal, greed, love – and the freedom to paint, or the freedom to refuse to do so.

Press Reviews

"Lauren Gunderson constructs layers of edgy, fraught dialogue to probe a real-life mystery: Why did Rudolf Bauer, a pioneer of Non-Objective art, stop painting after signing a contract with Solomon Guggenheim that would promise all his future work to Guggenheim’s new museum?… [A] love triangle provides plenty of fuel for Gunderson to explore the sometimes-fragile nature of the artistic impulse, the moral obligations of the artist, the significance of art and art-making, and the convoluted relationships that can foster or block the artist’s singular spirit."
— San Francisco Examiner

"There’s brittle, witty repartee… [with] terse, poetic statements of Bauer’s evocative aesthetics."
— San Francisco Chronicle

"Gunderson’s work of historical fiction tackles the complex emotions and motivations behind Bauer’s disappearance from the art scene in the early 1940s. Fluctuating between a living-room drama and an avant-garde display, Gunderson lands on a few genuinely intriguing moments.” "
— TheaterMania

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Louise Bauer 50, very pretty, defensive, likes things to be calm and ordered (pronounced closer to “Louiseh” than “Loueezz”).	—	—	50, very pretty, defensive, likes things to be calm and ordered (pronounced closer to “Louiseh” than “Loueezz”).
Hilla Rebay 60, powerful, tempestuous, a natural force of a woman.	female	—	60, powerful, tempestuous, a natural force of a woman.
Rudolf Bauer 62, brilliant but hardened man, can’t get out from under his own shadow. Gray-white hair. Louise calls him Rudi (pronounced “Roody”).	male	—	62, brilliant but hardened man, can’t get out from under his own shadow. Gray-white hair. Louise calls him Rudi (pronounced “Roody”).