''Bauer'' is a play by Lauren Gunderson. It had its world premiere in March 2014 at the

San Francisco Playhouse San Francisco Playhouse (formerly SF Playhouse) is a non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, founded in 2003 by Bill English and Susi Damilano. The theater stages nine plays yearly, including Broadway plays, musicals, and world ...

, the same theatre that commissioned it. Based on the life of the German painter Rudolf Bauer, the play tells the story of how, after having arrived in the United States of America at the beginning of World War II, Bauer was tricked by fellow German artist and love of his life, Hilla von Rebay, into signing a contract that gave Solomon R. Guggenheim the legal rights to all of his paintings and any future works he created. The play triggered a retrospective of Bauer's work at the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco.

Plot

The play begins in January 1953 at Bauer's beachfront mansion in

Deal, New Jersey Deal is a borough situated on the Jersey Shore within Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The community was settled by Europeans in the mid-1660s and named after an English carpenter from Deal, Kent. As of the 2020 United State ...

. According to the Dramatist Play Service, ''Bauer'' is the story of a painter who does not want to paint and the despair it brings him and his wife. Starring only three actors, this play explores the depths of greed, betrayal, love, the freedom of painting, and the freedom of refusing to paint.

Characters

* Rudolf Bauer: The tortured title character who battles the urge to paint with the feeling of not being able to do so because of the position he is in of no longer owning what he creates. * Louise Bauer: Bauer's caring wife, who, in a last desperate attempt to make her husband paint again, invites his ex-lover Hilla Rebay to their home. * Hilla Rebay: Bauer's long-gone German lover who started a relationship with Guggenheim and made Bauer sign the contract giving up his art.

Original cast

* Ronald Guttman as Rudolf Bauer * Stacy Ross as Hilla Rebay * Susi Damilano as Louise Bauer

References

{{Reflist

External links

Profile of Rudolf Bauer
by Karole Veil,

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

''Bauer'' official website

2014 plays American plays Plays set in the 1950s Plays set in New Jersey Cultural depictions of 20th-century painters Cultural depictions of German people Biographical plays about painters Deal, New Jersey in fiction