Steve Martin Offers to Pay for High School Production2009-03-15

Actor and comedian Steve Martin has offered to pay for the off-campus production of his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile after it was banned from an Oregon high school.

Martin wrote in a letter to The La Grande Observer that his goal in paying for the performance of the play is to keep his work "from acquiring a reputation it does not deserve," the Associated Press reports.

According to reports, Picasso at the Lapin Agile was banned from La Grande High School in Oregon after a parent objected to the production and provided a petition signed by 137 people. The main objections to the play were the drinking scenes and its alleged disrespectful references to women.

The imaginative play is set at a Paris bar where Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso meet while attempting to make their marks in the world of physics and art. Martin said in his letter to the paper that the goal of the play is to show "the similarity of the creative process involved in great leaps of imagination in art and science," AP reports.

The production will now be shown off-campus at Eastern Oregon University from May 16-18.

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