top of page

How To Steal A Picasso

(A comedy about art, artist and forgery)

A Finalist At The Eugene O'Neill

The Smith family doesn’t agree on much, but when Johnny comes home for the first time in four years, they reluctantly reunite to celebrate their father—a struggling painter—winning the prestigious Yoko Ono Lifetime Achievement Award for Non-Objective Art. However, the celebration takes a surreal twist when a Picasso disappears from the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Smiths find themselves under suspicion. Johnny’s long-awaited homecoming unravels further as both the missing Picasso and the father’s award are exposed as parts of a cruel hoax. Faced with these revelations, the family is forced to question the very nature of art in a modern, pixelated world where everything is copyrighted, and creativity risks being reduced to a commodity.

​

“A farce with an edge!” – The Kansas City Star

 

“Amid all the crazy plot turns, Downs finds opportunities to make valid statements about our perceptions of art, delusional self-styled “artists” and how art has lost any meaning beyond its value as a commodity.” – The Kansas City Star

 

"How to Steal a Picasso has the audience chuckling by the end of the first several speeches. It maintains its humor in what the author calls "farcical reality" all the way through the fast two act show that is still able to make its serious points.”  - Broadway Word

 

“The energy of a pinball machine, all flashing lights and erratic chimes and emotions that pivot with the stroke of a flipper…  How to Steal a Picasso is an unapologetically zany joke fest, but Downs finds time to toss a few telling contradictions into the fray.”  - Kansas City Pitch

    bottom of page