Customer Reviews

Venus - Acting Edition

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"Early in the 19th century a poor wretched woman was exhibited in England under the appellation The Hottentot Venus. With an intensely ugly figure, distorted beyond all European notions of beauty, she was said to possess precisely the kind of shape which is most admired among her countrymen, the Hottentots."

The awesome Suzan-Lori Parks here tells of Saartjie Baartman, a historical person, famous as The Venus Hottentot. Parks style reminds of vaudville. Very stylized, fluid in the movement of actors from one character to another, in the direct connection with the audience, in the passage of time and in the presentational aspect of her stories. Through her style the play feels like a carnival show, with boasting and huckster cries, something that would work on a medieval wagon stage.

Venus is about a young woman taken from her home where she was a servant in Africa in the early 1800's to England to be exploited as a sideshow freak/savage/heathen particularly because of her large butt. From there her fame and in some instances, fortunes grow until her death in 1810 in Paris.

There is much in the way of historical referencing here, including what seem to be quotations from medical, literary and personal journals of the day. But it seems Parks created this, because no bibliographic references are made. This is all the more impressive then, because Parks' spot on medical language denotes an era and an attitude. While her dialogue which is written in a sort of simple, phonetic, colloqueal style flows easily from the uneducated Venus and those witnessing her life, from The Negro Resurrectionist and the Chorus, to the educated Baron Docteur, whose double fascination (medical/sexual) with her gets the better of him and the worse of her.

Truly a tale of exploitation and manipulation, about the European maligning of Africans for humorous, medical, fashionable, financial and sexual means. Venus is a tragic figure, representative of the social abuse of Africans by Europeans, whose human qualities become gross examples of a sub-species, the basest form of life, medical oddities and for the Baron Docteur, then surprisingly powerful and moving.

Writes Parks in her bio at the back of the play: "'Tell all the Truth but tell it slant,' as Emily Dickinson says. With Venus my angle is this: History, Memory, Dis-Memory, Remembering, Dismembering, Love, Distance, Time, a Show."

....to the metaphorical, this is it. Although not published yet, the play has been produced and I'll tell you I'm one of the lucky ones to have sat through the entire pleasure of it. Suzan-Lori Parks makes THINKING in the theatre ENTERTAINING, makes entertaiment a joyful exploration of mind and soul. She is a shimmering lake at sunset, a depth we can only guess at but a beauty that brings us back and back and back...

Very disturbing, but I love Suzan-Lori Parks' style. I read in a book she wrote that she believes that "history is time that won't quit," and that's very evident in this play, and makes it so interesting.

Venus's terrifyingly ambivalent character is gradually exposed throughout the course of this short yet explosive piece of experimental erotica. It would be all too easy to write this off as a drugsploitation piece, but a deeper truth is revealed by the powerful combinations of peyote and yage which the Doctor administers to his (initially) unwilling young patients, turning them into voracious, yet compliant, sexual zombies.

I found this book powerfully arousing - the Doctor is the very epitome of the fin-de-siecle cult leader, with a monstrous sexual appetite to match his towering charisma - and yet a surprising intellectual challenge. I recommend it to broad-minded adults everywhere.

So who was the Venus Hottentot, anyway? And what is this play about? Not an historical play (although it includes archival material), Parks gets to the stereotype of black female sexuality, while asking questions about our complicity in our own oppression. This allegorical work raises questions about the use of Baartman (the real "Venus Hottentot") as an icon for contemporary black female sexuality, among other things. If nothing else, this play may well have you looking up other information on Baartman.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this play. It took several attempts, as I frequently became 'overwhelmed' due to the stimulating nature of the material - and you know how it is after getting 'overwhelmed'...you just don't want to read on any more. Anyway, this is very high-class stuff indeed, and compares favourably (on a purely artistic level, of course) with such luminaries of the art as Georges Bataille and (particularly) Russ Meyer.

Wow! The play really drives home the raw and powerful sexuality of the Gods, and Venus the Queen of Sexuality plays nakedly amongst them all. Some may say pornographic, but the overall feel is of joyful fulfilment and erogenous excitement, transcending the everyday into an orgasmic, almost-orgiastic ritual society of rarified existence. Powerful physical interactions between players bordering on the overtly pornographic in places, definately phallic and in the best tradition of Greek theatre. Recommended for lovers and therapists!