By  Kevin Nance
                   staff, The Tennessean
                   published: July 16, 2000

                   War is art
 
                   For some painters, art is a form of therapy, a
                   source of self-expression or ego gratification.
                   For others, it may be a representation of
                   visible reality or of private visions. For still others,
                   it may simply be a job.

                   For the Pablo Picasso of Francis of Guernica,
                   a new musical theater work by Nashville
                   singer-songwriter Marcus Hummon, art was
                   an act of war.

                   The play, which opens Friday in a production by the Actors Bridge Ensemble,
                   depicts real and fictional events surrounding the creation of one of Picasso's
                   greatest masterpieces: Guernica, which evokes the horror of the German
                   attack on a small Basque town during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

                   About 1,500 people, between one-third and one-half of Guernica's
                   population, were killed in a few hours of saturation bombing.

                   "Picasso is often given credit for starting the idea of art-for-art's-sake, the
                   decorative sense of art, but I think he was really a classical thinker about
                   art, like Goya and Velasquez," says Hummon, a painter, poet and
                   composer of several No. 1 country hits, including the Dixie Chicks'
                   Cowboy Take Me Away, Tim McGraw's One of These Days and
                   Wynonna's Only Love.

                   "I think Picasso really felt he was raising the human condition, somehow
                   raising the human spirit," he says. "In Guernica, in the most obvious way,
                   he's crying out against brutality. In the script, I use a quote of his: 'Art is
                   not for decorating the walls. Painting is an instrument of war, of war, to be
                   waged against brutality and darkness.' "

                   In Francis of Guernica, Picasso rages in Paris as his native Spain is
                   devastated by the fascist forces of Franco and his allies, Hitler and
                   Mussolini. But even as he's painting Guernica, he becomes fascinated by
                   a beautiful American art historian, Brighten Mather, and the story she tells
                   of Francis, a young American fighting for the Spanish Republic. Francis'
                   story -- which is presented in the form of what Hummon calls "light-rock
                   opera" -- finds him falling in love with a young Jewish woman,
                   Renee-Claire. Francis is wounded in the fighting and, suffering from
                   shellshock, begins to fantasize that he is St. Francis of Assissi -- which
                   prompts Renee-Claire to remove him to her hometown of Guernica, where
                   she believes he will be safe.

                   As Francis' story unfolds in musical form, its scenes alternate with the
                   parallel and non-musical story of the creation of Guernica.

                   But just as Francis is not a true saint, neither is Picasso; he's presented
                   as a visionary artist with conventionally macho and sometimes even cruel
                   attitudes toward women.

                   "As Francis is getting deeper into his sainthood thing and pulling away
                   from his relationship with Renee-Claire, Picasso is mirroring that in his
                   relationship with his then-lover, Dora," Hummon says. "He was an
                   unbelievable artist, but I think his sexuality was very ordinary, very
                   19th-century, very bourgeois. As a man, he basically got away with as
                   much as he possibly could.

                   "I think the best of what he had to offer is in the work itself. Specifically, I
                   think the best of Picasso lives in that work, in the painting of Guernica."

                   Breaking the mold

                   Playing Picasso, as well as directing the show at the BMG Building on
                   Music Row, is Bill Feehely, Actors Bridge's artistic director and
                   Hummon's collaborator on two previous musical theater projects, Spoon
                   River Anthology and American Duet.

                   "In a lot of ways, the piece asks the question: Can a man be a
                   masterpiece?," says Feehely, who appeared last season in Tennessee
                   Repertory Theatre's Twelve Angry Men and Cyrano de Bergerac. "The
                   reason that Picasso is pulled into this fable-like story of Francis is that
                   the quest for greatness can come in various guises, that in fact that quest
                   can come out of madness. But there's also an element of madness in
                   Picasso, his need to break the mold, his aggressiveness in pursuing his
                   art. In that sense, both he and Francis become shell-shocked, and they
                   both find a kind of childlike innocence that allows them to see the world in
                   a much different way from anyone around them. They're both broken
                   people in a sense, both fools for God."

                   Can a man be a masterpiece? "You could certainly argue that Picasso
                   was the greatest mind of the 20th century in some respects, in the way
                   he saw things and broke them apart, then put them back together in a
                   new way," Feehely says. "But the example of his life also asks the
                   questions: What is greatness? What does it mean? Where does it come
                   from? And I think that's the theme of the play. Behind us all is that sense
                   of greatness that we greatly fear. And maybe it's those who don't fear who
                   achieve the greatest success."

                   And what of Picasso's monstrousness toward his women? "I think we
                   might understand Picasso by seeing that one can only be filled up with so
                   much stuff," Feehely says. "If he was that focused, that obsessed, that
                   drawn to his art, how much was left for anything else? He was trapped in
                   his total pursuit of art, and as a result he was not a full person. He gave
                   himself fully to his art, and what remained, he doled out grudgingly to
                   those around him. I don't think he comes off as a monster. I think he
                   comes off as someone who approaches the world on his terms and never
                   thinks of the consequences."

                   The cast also features Vali Forrister as Brighten Mather, Michelle
                   Prentice as Renee-Claire, and Nathan Lacey as Ernest Hemingway. And
                   the play's title role will be performed by Nashville singer-actor Mike
                   Eldred, who recently completed a tour of Frank Wildhorn's The Civil War.

                   Eldred wanted to work on the project, he says, because he sees
                   Hummon's life and work as a reflection of some of the play's central
                   themes of art is a life-and-death commitment that transcends the
                   commercial.

                   "He's my inspiration as an artist," says Eldred, who starred in the Rep's
                   productions of Tapestry and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and appeared
                   in The Civil War on Broadway. "I love what Marcus does, I love his mind,
                   and I feel like his theater work just keeps getting better and better.
                   Mainly, I like his motivation. I like the way he attacks art in general with
                   almost a sense of desperation, as if it's what he has to do."

                   getting there...

                   Francis of Guernica by the Actors Bridge Ensemble opens Friday and
                   continues through July 30 at the BMG Building, 140 18th Ave. S.
                   Showtimes are 8 p.m. July 21-23 and 27-30. Free parking is available in
                   Vanderbilt University Lot 77, at the corner of 18th and Horton avenues. For
                   tickets ($15) or for more information, call 341-0300.