The play is set in Picasso’s studio – through a series of imaginings Picasso meets five people killed in the aerial attack on market day in Guernica on 26th April 1937. Erika Luckert the Canadian play write has adapted each of the human figures in Picasso’s Guernica into a character. The play culminates in a moment where each of the characters takes up a pose from the painting, at this moment Picasso begins to paint.
The play encourages the audience to really connect with those that were killed in the town of Guernica – to engage with their individual lives to empathize with them. When the attack happens in the play the audience experiences loss. The play in many ways functions as an antidote to the numbness people feel when lives lossed are reduced to a number – to a statistic on the news.