Making History

Tom Sellar

How did you hear about the Hottentot Venus?

Suzan-Lori Parks

I overheard some people talking about her, I think it was at a party. They were discussing her, this woman with a big butt. And I thought, “oooh. She’s going to be a character in one of my plays.” At the time I was writing a play called Everything, which had a lot of historical characters in it. So I decided to include her in the play, and then Everything became Venus.

TS

So you went and read all the historical documentation about her?

SLP

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with it. What did I want to do with an autopsy report? There were a couple of drawings, a sketchy account of where she came from and where she died. Bits and pieces of things. What do you do with the fact that her labia were kept in a jar in the back room of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris? You have to draw on that.

In 1994 I went to the Villa Serbelom in Italy on a Rockefeller grant – you live in a villa for a month while you try to finish your work. And I was at the point where I thought, “If I don’t get to the heart of this play, I’ll lose my mind.” I had many drafts, and I knew that they were not quite right. I had lots of notes and things – and after years of work, I suddenly wrote it in a week or two. It was hard. I had to find Venus, I had to make contact with her.

TS

Did the story of the Hottentot Venus suggest the shape and structure of the play to you?

SLP

We mostly only know that Saartjie Baartman was born in Southern Africa, went to England, and died in France. So I’ve filled a lot in between those events. There are people I’ve added, like the Mother Showman, who’s sort of a cross between P.T. Barnum and Mother Courage.

I’ve left some things out, and I’ve included other things. Most of it’s fabricated, it’s questioning the history of history. The play doesn’t just swallow the story whole and regurgitate it onto the stage. It embraces the unrecorded truth.

TS

I want to ask you about form, because in some ways Venus is very different from your other plays. It has a sort of linear spine to it, with scenes going back and forth from there, but always returning to the narrative. In the past you’ve talked about your writing as “repetition and revision.” Is Venus written as “rep and rev” too, or is it something else to you, something different?

SLP

It is, it’s just on another level, the next level maybe. For example, in The America Play, you had the Father, who looked like Abraham Lincoln, and then in the second act he was repeated, he was followed by a young man (his son), who behaved a lot like he did. So that was another way of doing repetition and revision. Not just in words, but in actual characters on stage.

In Venus, The Man is later The Docteur. The Brother later becomes the Mother Showman and then The Grade School Chum. And The Resurrectionist turns into a watchman at the jail cell. So there’s a lot of repeating of faces. But also of words and phrases. Every time Venus has a big decision to make she says “do I have a choice?” – or someone says, “just say yes, just say yes.” Same thing, same situation, again and again and again, but it’s always different. You’re revisiting it each time.

TS

That reminds me of something you said in an essay you wrote for Grand Street, and about how Josephine Baker was “improvising her life” in a sense, always revising it as she retold it. It’s like “rep and rev” as a way of creating your life. Is Venus like that? Is she in that position?

SLP

She is, she is. She’s got to make her life up out of lots of little bits and pieces. But Baker would tell her life story to fit her present moment. When Baker was a star, she would tell her rags-to-riches story – even though that wasn’t her true story – whatever the truth was, if there was one.

Whereas there’s lots of different people telling the Venus story at once. We have The Docteur giving a lecture many years later, at a conference in Tübingen. His mind wanders and comes back, so he’s telling the story as a sort of “dis-re-memberment.” And The Resurrectionist is telling the story too, as a sort of re-memberment of the story: “the year was 1810…” And then you have Venus telling her own story, just by being present. By the end, she has a speech: “I was born near the coast…” and so on. So you have these three people trying to tell the story, and it goes backwards and forwards. It also has a play-within-the-play, since – among many other things – it’s about show business, showing yourself, being in a show.

It’s a much more traditional structure than what people are used to getting from me. But even though you can say it’s more linear and traditional, it still confounds people!

TS

Tell me how you hooked up with Richard [Foreman].

SLP

I’ve been a fan of his work ever since I moved to New York. Liz Diamond and I have made a lot of theatre together, and there’s nothing bad in that relationship at all. Liz is one of my best friends. But I knew that if I really wanted to grow; I was going to have to work with someone new. I really wanted to work with someone who had a lot more experience than I do. Just to see how I would change, what I would learn. Because you can start getting very comfortable in your work – it can be very good work, but you get comfortable and wonder, “am I not learning things that I should be learning? Who else is out there who would make me write on my feet?” – which Richard does. We’ll make a cut or something, and Richard will say, “we seem to need something else here now.” I usually don’t write in rehearsal.

TS

Richard has a very strong, very specific formal sense. He asks actors to move at certain kinds of angles, he wants to use head mics a certain way, he knows what the lettering should look like, what the total visual landscape is. What do you think you’ve gotten out of working with a director who has such a strong sense of form?

SLP

It makes my job easier. It’s like being a dead playwright. Really! That’s the real test, to see if your plays are any good. Can it be done without me? That’s why sometimes I don’t come to rehearsal. To see: is the writing good enough, is it strong enough, are the characters interesting enough to hold up to someone’s ideas?

TS

Have you ever thought about directing your own stuff?

SLP

I haven’t. I haven’t.

TS

Running your own theatre?

SLP

Never, never. Directing, maybe someday, but I like writing so much. And I want to be able to write everything I want to.

TS

Have you found anything out about the play in rehearsal that you didn’t think you would? Any surprises?

SLP

I knew it was funny. I knew it was sad. But that was without Richard. I knew it was weird and unseemly – and he definitely brought that out. That’s a very difficult thing to embrace. It’s not a feel-good play. It’s not a “politically correct” play, and that is very important. It’s not the story of a black woman who’s victimized. It’s not that simple.

TS

It’s more about the currents in these people’s lives, the way all these things circulate – great love, chocolate, race, history, bodies – constantly circulating.

SLP

Like the Milky Way, a galaxy of all these things going around! Yeah, exactly.

TS

I want to ask you about a specific line, “the Venus Hottentot iz dead, there wont b inny show tonite.” It’s repeated over and over in the prologue and epilogue, and the actors and I were discussing it the other day. It’s kind of saying “she’s dead, she’s dead, don’t get inside her head, don’t feel sorry for her, don’t psychologize her, ’cause she’s not here.” Also – because the play begins with her death, tells her life story, and then ends with her death again – it makes the whole evening a kind of resurrection that these twelve people create every night. A resurrection of Saartjie Baartman on stage.

SLP

Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve done a resurrection in so many of my plays. In Death of the Last Black Man, the line that’s repeated is the announcement, along the same lines, “this is the death of the last black man in the whole entire world.” In effect it’s saying, this is what it is, this is what we’re doing. There’s a gravedigger at the center of The America Play. I’m obsessed with resurrecting, with bringing up the dead. Every night the dead rise.

TS

Do you ever think of yourself as a kind of playwright-resurrectionist? Digging around in the Great Whole of History for the voices?

SLP

Oh, totally. Or letting them in the house when they knock on the door. You know, sometimes you dig, and sometimes you just open the door. Which is what eavesdropping is, hearing stories as they come into my head. That’s why theatre for me is important and exciting. I’m creating a kind of history.

When I did The America Play – which is about this man who looks like Abraham Lincoln, who goes out West and performs – people said “did it really happen?” and I could say “yeah, it happens every night.” That’s as real as anything else. That’s why theatre’s interesting to me because you can insert it into real life and sort of make history.

TS

And history’s a show too?

SLP

Exactly, floats go by: Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth…

TS

It seems like you come back to the nineteenth century a lot. Is there something appealing about that time to you? Big ideas, intellectual currents, or a certain look?

SLP

My last two plays have dealt with the nineteenth century somehow. But any period appeals to me really. Anything that’s big, that throws a lot of shade, is exciting to me, whether it’s the nineteenth century, or B.C. time. But it has to be big.

TS

In your play Devotees in the Garden of Love, there’s this expectant bride – George-then-Patty – who finally wins her suitor after making sacrifice after sacrifice. Is she like Venus? Is there any connection between these characters who sacrifice for this ideal?

SLP

I think Joseph Campbell may have spoken of “the three faces of God.” In Venus there are three faces of love. Venus, the love-object; the unloved (who is the Bride-To-Be in the play-within-the-play); and the lover, who has two faces, as the dis-rememberer (The Docteur), and as the re-memberer (The Resurrectionist). I don’t think that at the beginning of the play Venus wants love. I think she wants money, and she wants to come back home after a couple of years and be rich. But as she goes out into this world and realizes that she is not loved, then she wants love, she wants comfort. So when The Docteur comes in, he’s like her knight in shining armor. By the end all she says is “love me, love me, love me.”

TS

And a lot awful things happen to Venus, which she’s told are because of “love.” The Chorus of Spectators maul her because the public “loves” and “adores” her and The Docteur tells her that the anatomists at the academy “love” her.

SLP

“Love” is a word that is used so casually, I know what you mean. Richard often says that good art tries to circumscribe, to circle around what it can’t quite comprehend, that nameless thing. And I think that’s what I’m doing. “Love” is what I’m circling around.

TS

Is your process of circling around, searching for what’s present, one reason you have the “spells” – where sometimes you simply list a character’s name in the script, but don’t include any dialogue for that line?

SLP

No, those are when I’m really on to the character, but what’s being experienced has no words. I want a sense of “there is a moment here” so the reader actually can see something on the page. Like the scene where Venus is being persuaded to go to England. She asks, “do I have a choice?” and these two guys are saying “think it over, think it all over,” and on the page you see “THE BROTHER. VENUS. THE MAN. THE BROTHER. VENUS. THE MAN.” I know exactly what they’re doing, but they’re not talking, they’re just being who they are, emanating their energy.

TS

Did Richard need guidance from you to find that kind of thing? How did you work together?

SLP

I told him what they were. But he needed very little guidance, and that’s why I enjoyed working with him so much. I got the sense from the first couple of meetings we had that he really understood the play. There were a couple of things he didn’t get, like The Mother in the play-within-the-play is the mother of The Young Man, not of The-Bride-To-Be. Technical stuff. But he completely got the humor, the sadness, and the unseemliness. We’d talked a lot about the play while we were casting it, and we were on the same wavelength from then on. Of course, Richard has his own thing going, too. But it wasn’t at the expense of my play.

TS

Has working with Richard changed the way you think about your future work at all?

SLP

I’d like the work always to be this good. I’ll see you in the year 2001 – it takes me 5 years a play!

TS

You’ve just finished your first feature-length screenplay, Girl 6, which Spike Lee directed. And what’s next? You’re writing a new play and some more screenplays.

SLP

There’s a play at the back of my mind, called Deluxe. It’s big, I’m thinking big. I’m doing a novel, well, three novels actually. We’ll see what they turn out to be. It’s very hard, because you have to write all the way across the page!

And I’ve written another screenplay since Girl 6, called Gal. It’s an adaptation of a novel that came out a couple of years ago, by Ruthie Bolton. And I’m about to start two more. One’s an adaptation of The America Play, called Road to Reno. It’s very different from the play. They’re in Reno, in the West. The Dad is a stand-up comedian, he does “historical comedy” but he’s not that successful, and the mother and the girl drive a 1962 model Hearse.

TS

It’s an American movie, there’s gotta be a car and a shot of the road.

SLP

A road, a road and a big Hearse moooooving down the road.

TS

What about the play, Deluxe?

SLP

Well, there’s lots of death in it, of course.

TS

And love?

SLP

At this point there’s just a bed scene. It’s kind of a myth, it takes place in a town. Basically, it’s to answer a question I asked myself: what would it be like if five Greek plays were running simultaneously in your head? It’s going to be lots of fun.

TS

Formally, is it similar to Venus?

SLP

Maybe. Have you ever done any martial arts? I have. Venus is kind of like getting your black belt. After years of study and hard work, you complete an arduous task and reach a new level. And on this level, there all these things that you don’t recognize, and you have to learn all over again. And that’s why I’m doing these novels, these movies, this new play that I don’t really know about.

TS

You have to learn the moves…

SLP

Yes! I have to learn new moves. I have no idea what kind of writer I am. I don’t. I find out with every play.