VENUS by Suzan-Lori Parks, February 21-24
The Muhlenberg Department of Theatre & Dance presents a rare production of the Obie Award-winning play in the Baker Theatre, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew Street, Allentown PA.Monday, February 18, 2008 01:59 PM
February 21–24 / Thurs, Fri, Sat 8PM / Sun 2PM
$15 adult or senior / 484-664-3333 / www.muhlenberg.edu/tickets
Mature Audiences Only.
Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most exciting and acclaimed playwrights in American drama. She has won multiple Obie Awards (including Venus, 1996), a MacArthur “Genius” Award, and she is the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama (Topdog/Underdog.) In awarding Parks the prestigious “Genius Award” in 2001, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation described Parks as "a playwright who challenges notions of the historical construction and context of the African American experience. She deftly reflects and refracts social imagery in American and African American culture and history. Her work reveals the role that drama plays in shaping and propagating assumptions about race and culture.”
VENUS – the play
Venus re-visions the story of the historical side show sensation, Saartje Baartman who came to be known as “The Venus Hottentot.” At the play’s center is a young African woman brought to London by English colonialists under the pretense of making her an exotic dancer with the hopes of getting rich. Instead, Baartman must try to hang onto her own identity as she is displayed as an object of spectacular sexuality and desire, manipulated by hustlers, lovers, and doctors. Taking place in the early 1800s, beginning in colonized South Africa and then moving to England, France and Germany in the course of Venus’s life, the play captures a formative moment in Europe’s construction of a racial mythology about Africans.
Jeremy Alden Teissere, Ph.D., assistant professor of neuroscience at Muhlenberg, writes that the anxiety in the 19th century about what someone was – racially and sexually – sent surgeons and scientists of this era running to measure and articulate anatomical differences. The objective was to place race and gender in a Great Chain of Being – with whiteness and maleness at the apex. In the case of Saartje Baartman, the young woman became a symbol of sexual wildness and desire, but also a scientific curiosity.
Suzan-Lori Parks seizes on the history and the mythology to spin a revisionist history of time and culture. She writes in her introduction to her anthology, The American Play and Other Works: “A play is a blueprint of an event: a way of creating and rewriting history through the medium of literature.” She describes the fate of African-American history as “unrecorded, dismembered, washed out” and determines to “make” history in the theatre – to “locate the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down.”
Inextricably political and personal, Parks weaves the story of Venus through a highly stylized series of scenes. Staged with the energy of a vaudevillian sideshow, the audience shares the life journey of “The Hottentot Venus” from a deliberate aesthetic distance. Parks’ awareness of the harm that results from seeing a person as an object rather than her whole self is wrapped in theatrical spin, musical vignettes, and spectacular ironies. When the Baron-Docteur buys Venus away from the Mother Showman, he gives her two options: remain in Europe and share his bed or return to Africa in poverty and servitude. Venus replies, simply and aptly, “Do I have a choice?”
Her interest in African American history manifests itself in Venus as a critical view of Europe’s preoccupation with anatomy, medicine, evolution, and theories of race that justify their colonial politics. Parks further uses the historical events of the Venus story to launch her questioning exploration of exploitation and identity: How much choice does Venus have in the display of her body? How much agency do we each have in constructing our identities?
Venus is an epic, circular play that captures the playwright’s vision of history and stretches out to challenge and entertain contemporary audiences.
SPECIAL EVENT: VISITING SCHOLAR - LECTURE 2:00 Saturday, February 23rd
The appeal and audience draw of the “freak show” continues today, according to visiting scholar Dr. Harvey Young, who will offer a lecture and post-show talk on campus at 2:00 in the Rectial Hall of the Baker Center for the Arts on Saturday, February 23rd. Currently a Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity, Young’s presentation – titled Freak Show Mania: The ‘Hottentot Venus’ and other ‘Wonders’ – offers a brief history of Saartje Baartman and draws a comparison between her 19th century display and contemporary, popular exhibitions of “freak shows” and “human carnivals.” The lecture will take place in the Recital Hall of the Baker Center for the Arts at 2:00 p.m. with a reception to meet the scholar to follow.
Young will conduct a post-show conversation following the Saturday 8 p.m. performance in the Baker Theatre of the Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance. Dr. Young is the author of numerous articles and essays, including “Touching History: Suzan-Lori Parks, Robbie McCauley, and the Black Body.” Dr. Young’s first book, Embodying Black Experience: Performance, Stillness and the Black Body, will soon be released by The University of Michigan Press. He received a B.A. with Distinction from Yale and a Ph.D. from Cornell University; he is an Assistant Professor of Theatre/Performance Studies at Northwestern University and President of the Black Theatre Association.
THE ARTISTS
Suzan-Lori Parks is a playwright, screenwriter, and novelist whose plays also include Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, The Death Of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, and In The Blood. Her work was the subject of the PBS Film The Topdog/Underdog Diaries. An alumna of New Dramatists, Parks is the recipient of a Leila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Foundation Grant, and a MacArthur Foundation Award. Her work for film and television includes Girl 6 (directed by Spike Lee) and the adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, for Oprah Winfrey Presents.
Directing is Dr. Beth Schachter, who has staged Muhlenberg’s productions of Brighde Mullins’ Monkey in the Middle, the original musical melodrama Lures and Snares, the world premiere of Mac Wellman’s poetic Anything’s Dream . Her directing career includes New York City and regional theatre credits at The New Victory Theatre (Broadway), New York Theatre Workshop, Second Stage, McCarter Theatre, Public Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Vineyard Theatre, and the Adirondack Theatre Festival. She has directed numerous premieres, among them Suzan-Lori Parks’ The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World. While at Muhlenberg, she has created and directed several new projects. She directed the Muhlenberg premier of Mac Wellman’s Anything’s Dream as well as the show’s New York City debut at The Flea Theater. Schachter has gathered a team of guest artists – Liz Covey, costumes; Robin Vest, scenic design; Sarah Jakubasz, lighting - to collaborate with the Muhlenberg’s artistic team, which includes Charles O. Anderson, movement; Marla Burkholder, dialect coach; and Louis DiLeo, sound design and composer – to create the vaudevillian landscape of the production.
Charles O. Anderson, the Director of the African American Studies Minor at Muhlenberg College, is preparing actors for the cultural and physical challenges of the play by exploring the physical embodiment of character and studying African versus European movement, body image and body knowledge. Anderson is an assistant professor of dance at Muhlenberg College and a recent recipient of a Pew Fellowship Grant to develop new work for his Philadelphia-based company, dance theatre X. Liz Covey’s recent designs include: The History Boys and Witness for the Prosecution for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, The Constant Wife and A Flea in Her Ear for The Olney Theatre, Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure for Actors Theatre of Louisville and Cincinnati Playhouse, Wittenberg for the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia and The Constant Couple and Biography for the Pearl Theatre in New York City. Sarah Jakubasz’s past design credits include Skinpoppin with Basil Scrivens, Eccentricities of a Nightingale directed by Kim Weild, Cigarettes and Chocolate at Under St.Marks, Golden Age at The Krane Theatre, Mme Douce-Amere at the Walnut Street Studios and the Philly Live Arts Festival, The Witching Hour at The Williamstown Theatre Festival, Designer Genes at The Pelican, and School For Scandal at Gallery Players. Robin Vest’s work in New York City include: Hoodoo Love (The Cherry Lane), A Very Common Procedure (MCC), Pen (Playwright’s Horizons), Acts of Mercy: passion play and God Hates the Irish (Rattlestick), Black Snow (The New School), Mario and the Magician (Center for Contemporary Opera), Get What You Need (Atlantic 453), The Darker Face of the Earth (TWAS, AUDELCO nomination).
Featured in the cast is Equity artist Holly Cate, whom Schachter cast as “the showman” who orchestrates Venus’s rise to fame in London. Holly has performed on Broadway in An Ideal Husband (directed by Sir Peter Hall); in regional theatre productions of Blithe Spirit (Portland Stage), An Ideal Husband (Pioneer), All My Sons (American Stage), Arms and the Man (Asolo), and numerous others.
Playing the role of Venus is Muhlenberg drama major Catherine Davidson, who has performed on campus in the performance ensemble The Weight of Feathers and wrote the original play “Princess” for the recent Muhlenberg Theatre Association production of New Voices. The cast also includes Eric Thompson and Anthony Franqui and ensemble members Wilma Cespedes-Rivera, Kate Franklin, Robert Grimm, Teddy Lytle, Denise Ozer, Sarah Primmer, Danny Ryan, Monique St. Cyr and Zach Trebino.
For interview, photo, or review opportunities, please contact Marilyn J. Roberts at 484.664.3333.
