FINALIST AT THE EUGENE O'NEILL - PUBLISHED BY TRW (Theatrical Rights Worldwide)

"Amid all the crazy plot turns, Downs finds opportunities to make valid statements about our perceptions of art, delusional self-styled "artists" and how art has lost any meaning beyond its value as a commodity." - Kansas City Star.


"How to Steal a Picasso has the audience chuckling by the end of the
first several speeches. It maintains its humor in what the author calls
"farcical reality" all the way through the fast two-act show that is still
able to make its serious points." Broadway World

"A farce with an edge!" – The Kansas City Star

"Amid all the crazy plot turns, Downs finds opportunities to make valid
statements about our perceptions of art, delusional self-styled "artists."
and how art has lost any meaning beyond its value as a commodity." –
The Kansas City Star

Otto Smith's dreams have come true. After a lifetime of struggles as an unknown painter and decades as a tour guide at the Detroit Institute for the Arts, he's won a major art award. But things quickly go wrong when a fifty-million-dollar Picasso is stolen from the museum on the same day that his long-lost son, an alleged art forger, shows up in the Motor City. Soon Otto's family is the chief suspect. This dark comedy looks at what is real and what is counterfeit in this pixilated world where we too often think of artists as employees and art as a mere commodity. How To Steal A Picasso received standing ovations, and its run was extended at the Unicorn Theatre/