Sunday in the Park with George

ACT ONE

It is 1884, on La Grande Jatte, and painter Georges Seurat (known as “George”) is creating sketches for his new work. The stage is bare, a “blank page or canvas,” but as he works, a park along the River Seine appears. People begin to fill in the landscape, including his lover Dot, who is posing for him. She is hot and uncomfortable in her stiff dress, upset that she must stand in the sun as George admonishes her to concentrate (“Sunday in the Park With George”). In her imagination, she slips from her dress and dances, admitting that there are worse things than being in the park on a Sunday. More park patrons appear: an old fussy woman and her nurse, who is interested in a German coachman named Franz. The park is tranquil until some noisy bathers disrupt the peacefulness. George makes a sweeping gesture, and the bathers freeze into the painting Bathers at Asnières, his first major work.

Now the painting is on display at a museum. Jules and Yvonne enter, critical of the work