A woman walks across the stage, painfully slow. Her skin is a stark, pale white that is characteristic of ghosts. The sound of her footsteps echoes throughout the theater, creating an ominous allusion that she is walking to her death. But she instead ends up at a dinner table, along with an innocent young woman, a sullen old man, a salacious boy, and a conflicted gentleman. The old man wields a gun, using it to shoot the indecent boy that sits across from him at the table, his young counterpart.

During this past week, I went to see the painting by Pablo Picasso titled Demoiselles d' Avignon . It is an enormously large oil painting that is of five naked women posing provocatively and sexually. If I had not read the text of the painting I probably would not have grasped the context of the painting or know what to make of it. The women in the painting are supposed to be prostitutes and inside a brothel located on the street of Avignon in Barcelona.

I'm not even sure what adjectives I should use to describe the the play on Tuesday. It was different and interesting to say the least, and it was hard not to pay attention. I loved how the play was completely in French, even though it was difficult to adjust to reading the subtitles and watching the actors. The way the characters spoke so smoothly and elegantly was mesmerizing, it made me want to learn the language and understand what they were saying as they were saying it. I felt like I would have grasped the emotions of the characters better if I was able to see them as they spoke.

 When I left the Harvey theater after seeing Quartett, my emotions were of a mixed miriad. I didn't really know what to think and how to possibly start dissecting the many frustrating aspects of Quartett. This was the general response form my peers as well, in face, no one knew how to interpret or understand what they had just seen. There was just no fluidity or cohesion between any of the many theatrical parts we had just seen thrown together on stage.