When Mark Rothko hires a new assistant, he doesn’t know that it will lead him to begin to question the purpose behind his art.
It is the late 1950s and Mark Rothko, the famous Abstract Expressionist painter, is at a crossroads in his career. Intellectual, controlling and often bombastic, Rothko is at work on a surprising (and very well-paid) commission: a series of murals to hang at the Four Seasons restaurant in Midtown Manhattan’s Seagram’s Building. The play takes place in Rothko’s studio, where he works with the help of a smart, young assistant.