Venus (Paperback)

by Suzan-Lori Parks (Author) "The Venus facing stage right..." (more)
Key Phrases: dont look, The Chorus, The Negro Resurrectionist, The Grade-School Chum (more...)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
One of the contemporary American theater's most innovative wordsmiths. Her plays include: Topdog/Underdog (2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama), In the Blood (2000 Pulitzer-nominee), Fucking A, Venus (OBIE Award), The America Play and Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (OBIE Award, Best New American Play). She is also a screenwriter, novelist, and MacArthur "Genius" grantee.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group; 1 edition (April 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559361352
• ISBN-13: 978-1559361354
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #603,449 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Exploitation is Amazing Theatre, December 6, 2004

By	Aco - See all my reviews

"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."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If there is a voice that has risen beyond the multicultural, January 31, 1997

By A Customer

....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...

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Parks plays with stereotypes again., February 14, 2002

By	L. Anderson "lisaand" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.