VENUS by Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Beth Schachter

February 21-24 • Baker Theatre, Trexler Pavilion
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 2 pm

Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most exciting and acclaimed playwrights in American drama. She is the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for the Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog and a MacArthur "Genius" Award recipient, among many other honors. A storyteller with a great sense of history, a phenomenal sense of language and music, and an inspired sense of humor, Parks writes,

"A by-product of Time is History - what is remembered, recorded and transported into the next age. History - the destruction and creation of it through theatre pieces and how Black people fit into all of this - is my primary artistic concern. As an artist I have to go where the writing takes me."

Venus is set in the early nineteenth century and captures a formative moment in stereotyping and cultural myth-making. Parks provides a critical view of Europe's preoccupation with anatomy, medicine, evolution and theories of race that justify their colonial politics. Races were seen as links on a natural chain of evolution, with Africans permanently relegated to the lowest link. At the center of this play is Saartjie Baartman, a young African woman brought to London by English colonialists under the pretense of making her an exotic dancer.

A black play fights the power.
A black play embraces the infinite.
A black play is tragic.
A black play is funny as hell.                             Suzan-Lori Parks

Saartjie Baartman tries to hang onto her own identity as she is displayed as an object of spectacular sexuality and desire by hustlers, lovers and doctors . Staged with the energy of a vaudevillian sideshow, the audience shares the life journey of "The Hottentot Venus" from a deliberate aesthetic distance. Park's awareness of the harm that results from seeing a person as an object rather than as her whole self is wrapped in theatrical spin, spectacular ironies and musical vignettes.

Winner of the 1996 Obie Award for Best New American Play, Venus remains an epic, circular play that challenges and entertains.  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.”

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, directed.. 

Featured in the cast was Equity artist Holly Cate as “the showman” who orchestrates Venus’s rise to fame in London.  The cast includedr Catherine Davidson (Venus), Eric Thompson (Baron), Anthony Franqui (Negro Resurrectionist) and ensemble members Wilma Cespedes-Rivera, Kate Franklin, Robert Grimm, Teddy Lytle, Denise Ozer, Sarah Primmer, Danny Ryan, Monique St. Cyr and Zach Trebino.

Schachter gathered a team of guest designers – 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.

Sweetness, Magic and Light in Zanna, Don't!
Director, Dany Guy. Musical Director, Ken Butler. Book, music and lyrics by Jim Acito,
with additional book and lyrics by Alexander Dinelaris.
April 2-6 in the Studio Theatre, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance

Finding the perfect match isn't easy in this campy musical comedy about Heartsville, USA and the relationships of eight high school students tossed between love and acceptance. The Drama Desk Award-nominated musical fairy tale by composer-lyricist-librettist Tim Acito and collaborator Alexander Dinelaris, opened at the John Houseman Theatre after an Off-Off-Broadway test run in fall 2002. The show is a social satire with heart and sincerity, boasting a score that flirts with funk, rock, pop, classic musical theatre, country and more.

Zanna posits an alternate world where homosexuality is the norm and straight people are considered deviant. The plot focuses on two high school couples: Mike, a chess champ, hooks up with Steve, a football star, even as waitress Roberta connects with mechanical bull rider Kate. Trouble brews in the show's gay universe when high school pals Kate and Steve find they are attracted to each other after sharing a passionate moment in the school musical. With the help of his magic wand, Zanna tends to the hearts and lives of all around him in this story based on a humorous and hopeful message of tolerance.

" Think of the show as a bright hybrid of Bye Bye Birdie, Grease,
with a touch more social satire and heart."
Kenneth Jones for PLAYBILL

Dany Guy'08 directed; the company included Kennedy Kanagawa, Micahel Biren, Monica Hanofee, Zach Chiero, Rebecca Goldstein, Mike Miller, Dana Lynn Parisi, and Erik M. Fiebiger.

The show won the Lucille Lortel "Outstanding Musical" Award in 2003 was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The musical also received a 2003 Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Award for its "fair, accurate and inclusive representations" of the gay community and issues that effect their lives.