“THE GAME OF LOVE AND CHANCE”
Artist: Robert Cothran
Printer: Beauvais Lyons
Printing Assistants: Shaurya Kumar, Sarah Evans, James Greene
Edition: 30 impressions
Price: $400 donation to "The University of Tennessee School of Art." Donors receive a $200 tax deduction. Proceeds support student enrichment in printmaking.

See this print on display in the office of the School of Art!

Description of the Project by Robert Cothran:

This lithograph is based on a stage setting I designed for the play,The Game of Love and Chance, by Neil Bartlett.

When I design a stage setting, it is my practice to prepare and circulate to everyone working on the production a drawing which has on the upper half of the sheet an orthographic floor plan of the setting, drawn to scale, and on the lower half a rendered perspective view of the setting. Besides the obvious projective relationship of the two drawings, there are often unexpected ornamental and metaphorical relationships implied by the juxtaposition of two very different views of the same subject. This print is an exploration of such a set of relationships.

The play is a wildly comic and intricately layered version of a 17th century French farce by Marivaux. The original 17th century play is clearly visible in characters, situations and plot. Bartlett’s version places the play in England in the 1930’s. Two of the principal characters, a young lady and a young gentleman, strangers to one another but the objects of an engagement arranged by their fathers, are scheduled to meet. For this meeting they each contrive to change places, more or less secretly, with a servant -- she with her maid and he with his chauffeur-- and the comic mistakes begin. But the script makes it clear that the audience is to see this 30’s version of the play as a play, being performed by a group of actors here and now, whom the audience sees offstage as well as on. On top of that, it is implicit that this company is improvising the play in the fashion of a commedia de’l arte troupe, on an outline familiar to them all. All but one, that is; the actor playing the young gentleman is new to the company and is playing the part for the first time.

The production of The Game of Love and Chance that I designed was done at Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo, New York, in 1994. The stage director for the production was Gavin Cameron-Webb, who was also Artistic Director of Studio Arena Theater. Gavin is a superb stage director, for whom I have designed many other productions, and one of my best friends in the theater business. Thus, some years later, when I learned that Gavin was engaged to be married to Jane Page, who is also a stage director and a dear friend with who I have often worked, I could not think of anything more appropriate for a wedding gift than to develop the “plan-and-perspective” sheet from The Game of Love and Chance into a lithograph for them. Love, courtship, and the triumph of true love over the most absurd obstacles being the entire subject of the play, a statue of Venus is poised on the lip of a seashell settee, in the center of an ocean wave and scallop shell carpet. The decor of the wall is a whimsical mural on renaissance themes, in the light, characteristically 1930’s style of the English painter and designer Rex Whistler. Both bookcases are concealed service entrances.

The Latin inscription in the cartouche at the top of the print may be translated, “Erected in honor of the marriage of Jane and Gavin,” Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, and Dionysus, God of Theater, survey the proceedings from the corners of the pediment. At the very bottom Eros runs the rapids in his kayak.

Description of the Project by Beauvais Lyons:

Robert Cothran is a Professor Emeritus of Theatre from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville where he taught scene design and was involved in numerous productions at the Clarence Brown Theatre. Bob has periodically made lithographs in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Printshop since 1986, when he took a beginning lithography course with me. In 1993 we completed our first collaboration, an elaborate full-sheet, six-color lithograph to celebrate the bicentennial of the University in 1994. Prints from this edition are in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville; and the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga. The Bicentennial Lithograph was presented a gift to UT Presidents Ed Boling and Joseph Johnson as well as to Chancellor William Snyder.

“The Game of Love and Chance” is our second collaboration. It is a three-color hand-printed lithograph produced in an edition of 30 impressions on Somerset velvet white rag paper (22.5 x 27 inches). The key drawing was made on Bavarian limestone, with the other two runs from aluminum lithographic plates. The color in this print involves the use of a transparent warm tint-run on top of the cool key-run to create subtle shifts in the shadow areas of the image.

Twenty prints from the edition have been designated to raise funds for student enrichment in printmaking at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The print is available for a $400 donation to the University of Tennessee School of Art, of which $200 will be credited as a tax-deduction. Inquires should be directed to Professor Beauvais Lyons, School of Art, 1715 Volunteer Blvd., University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, 37996-2410, (865) 974-3202 or blyons@utk.edu.