After a La Grande, Oregon high school was forced to scuttle its planned production of Steve Martin's 1993 play Picasso At The Lapin Agile, Martin himself has stepped in and offered to help pay for an off-campus production. Reportedly, a parent objected to the play's subject matter and language in a petition presented a school district superintendent. The school board upheld the superintendent's decision to cancel the production, and a Student Democrats group at La Grande's Eastern Oregon University responded by raising money for the high schoolers to produce the play on their campus. Martin read about the controversy on-line—doing a vanity Google, perhaps?—and sent a letter to La Grande's newspaper The Observer, offering to cover any remaining costs. In the letter, Martin wrote that he objects to the petition's characterization of his play as being "about people drinking in bars and treating women as sex objects," and that he stepped in to prevent Picasso At The Lapin Agile from "acquiring a reputation it does not deserve."
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