For Posterior's Sake

The verbal fireworks of Suzan-Lori Parks’ plays invariably dispel the gloom that could otherwise engulf some of her main subjects: lies, loss, death. Her confident ear for the undaunted, unstoppable poetry that lies beneath the cruelest fates makes her plays resonate far beyond their singular subjects. In her hands, language becomes an alchemical crucible, transforming lies into nourishing myths, loss into discovery, and death into a rehearsal for living better. Hers are quintessentially America Plays (as her last play was entitled)—as lively and eloquent a record as any of the liabilities and liberties involved in closing out the so-called “American Century.” Shortly before her new play Venus went into rehearsal at the Public, she talked about it with Una Chaudhuri. Una Chaudhuri

This is a fantastic subject; not only is the story amazing in itself—an African woman brought to Europe and exhibited as a freak and imprisoned and studied by doctors and finally dissected and her sexual parts preserved in a museum where they remain to this day!—but it opens too many issues of concern today, such as the complex connection between race and gender. How did you come to Venus?

Suzan-Lori Parks

I overheard [director and frequent Parks collaborator] Liz Diamond—this was years ago—talking with someone, and she said ‘this woman with a big butt.’ And the bell went off in my head and I thought— hmm… that’s a subject for a play. I didn’t know anything about her and I had to go to the library and dig and dig and dig.

UC

So what was it about the big butt?

SLP

Oh, well, the butt is the past, the posterior: posterity. She’s a woman with a past, with a big past—History.

UC

You wrote once that you think of the theater as an incubator for the creation of historical events. Why is that creation important to you?

SLP

Well, I don’t see history as some great and beautiful Persian carpet that’s been Unrolled Across the Floor of Eternity so that all its Splendors are Revealed. There are so many blank spaces. There’s a line in Virginia Woolf ’s Between The Acts, which is one of my favorite books, “‘You don’t believe in history,’ said William.” I’ve put that above my desk. Because I really don’t [believe in history]. I know that things happened in the past, but I do think that how they happened is more up for grabs than we are often led to believe.

UC

The idea of using theater as a vessel of remembering has a special poignancy here, because you are remembering someone who was both literally dismembered but also taken apart in terms of her meaning— dispersed among many medical and legal and anthropological and literary texts, excerpts of which are quoted in the play. Was part of your idea to find out what had not been captured in that way?

SLP

Yes, the play itself is that: it’s what didn’t get used up or chopped up. I’m not condemning the guys who cut her up—I mean, quite frankly if they hadn’t cut her up I never would have heard of her—what I’m saying is that it could have happened this way. For me the play came out of something beyond those discourses, something about her. I was drawn to her as a subject because of her name, Venus, love, and I write a lot about love in my work. There was also the idea of someone getting up on stage pretending they are someone that they are not. And that can be so much fun—and so I wanted to give these actors the opportunity to play lots of characters and change roles a lot. Because it’s all about the Show.

UC

Isn’t there a dark side to that theatricalization though? The Hottentot Venus was on stage, but she was also in a cage. She was dehumanized as a freak to be gaped at. When working on this story is there a danger of repeating the original violation?

SLP

I was trying—really hard!—I was trying to make it all all right somehow. I didn’t want to make her a victim. And yes, it was horrible that they looked at her, and everything else was horrible, horrible. And it was so very hard to write it, I just couldn’t finish. And then at some point I had the feeling that she herself, Venus, would say to me: “Sometimes telling the story is the only thing that makes it all right.” I know that sounds smarmy and sentimental, but putting it out there can make it O.K. It’s like in my play The Death of the Last Black Man—we see him die several times, and he comes out with a rope around his neck, and it’s all really horrible, but it’s a play, a kind of play that’s more like a religious experience, you know, like at Oberammergau where they parade a Christ through the streets and they reenact his story. So it’s more like a miracle play than: Look at her, she’s a black woman with a big butt.

UC

The other danger is that one can wind up retelling the debilitating story of oppression and victimization?

SLP

Yes, that’s why it took me forever to find her voice and her attitude. I had to find the balance, where she really was. I wanted to give her scenes so that we could really hook up with her and find out that: yes, she’s very intelligent, yes, she had a hand in her own destruction, and she wasn’t just some dummy or some opinionated loud-mouth. So I tried to give her little things—she can count, and she can wheel and deal, and later, when things are a bit better for her—I just love that scene—how she enjoys showing herself off, how she’s so thrilled with herself.

UC

How consciously did you engage the big social and political issues— gender, race, the myths and legends of colonialism—embedded in this story?

SLP

I have the sense that people—not just men, people across the board— don’t like women, and also that people, not just white people, but people across the board—don’t like black people, and being ‘fascinated’ with a black person or a woman can be a part of that. But I’m not raising a banner, or trying to Tell the World that this exists. My main commitment is to the characters in the play, to Venus and the Negro Resurrectionist and the Mother Showman (she might be my favorite character, she’s really evil, really bad!)—and when people like that come into the play, even the Doctor: sure he’s a white guy and he’s had advantages but he still comes into the play, comes into the room or the space in my brain wanting to be in the play, willing to join in the effort to tell the story— that’s what I’m committed to. The ‘issues’—I leave those to other people who are more qualified to discuss them.

UC

Speaking of legends, this is your first time working with Richard Foreman. I can think of so many places where your two theatrical universes might overlap—they are both ‘architectural,’ highly structured and stylized, both deeply engaged with language. But I can see some obvious differences too: Your fascination with facts, for instance, versus his almost hermetic mysticism. What happens when a dramatic vision as singular as yours meets a theatrical universe as distinctive as his?

SLP

I love that question because it reminds me of this physics question I remember from when I wanted to be a scientist: what happens when the immovable object meets an irresistible force? The answer is: everything. That’s my answer, just the beauty of the word—everything happens. There is no limit. Richard is fearless, both with his own plays and also in the production of plays he hasn’t written. Fearless, with a will of iron, but also incredibly kind. And he has a really good understanding of the play. So there is no limit to what can happen.