"Venus" by Pulitzer Nominated Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks-Historic Fictionalized Biopic "Venus Hottentot"

Suzan-Lori Parks doesn't shy away from disturbing topics regarding slavery, exploitation and oppression.  Her play "Father Comes Home from the Wars" portraying slavery during the Civil War was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.  Her play "In the Blood," appropriated Hawthorne's "The Scarlett Letter" to depict an oppressed heroine.  "Venus" is a fictional account of Sarah Baartman, a S African woman brought to Britain in 1810 (3 years after the country abolished slavery) a fact reiterated countless times.  Despite the emancipation of slavery (decades before the US) abuse, debasement and racial discrimination persisted.  Parks, a brilliant playwright and social activist, gives us a heroine brought from her native S Africa to Britain and placed on display in a freakshow to pose practically nude & brandish her protruding buttock.  The play is relentless in its debasement of Sarah Baarman, a.k.a. "Hottentot Venus."  However, Venus doesn't come across as a hapless victim, rather as a woman willing to gravitate towards financial gain.  There's plenty of pain felt for the humiliation Baarman endured but there wasn't a layered character development beyond a hapless, but willing participatant in her own debasement.  The minstrel narrator, a devise used to great effect in the musical "Scottsboro Boys" was disruptive here.   The British courtroom, vaudville antics were buffoonish.  The bewigged judges were to determine whether "Venus'" deplorable behavior was a crime or whether she was victimized.  The bewigged judges failed to find her or anyone guilty.  Watching, I felt ashamed for being a complicit gawker & for failing to registar signifigant empathy.  I did leave at intermission, missing any opportunity for the play's redemption.