Venus

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.