Unveiling the past: the multidimensional theatrical space in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus

Abstract

With acute historical awareness, African American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks uses abundant signs in the form of words, movements, sights, and sounds in her plays to create an imagined world, helping readers and audiences to revisit forgotten and neglected history and contemplate on how to read Africana history. In Venus, she wields rapid transformation of space, inserts a play-within-the-play, and presents historical extracts to reconstruct history. This article uses theatrical space as a critical tool to investigate how Parks uses the configuration of theatrical space within and theatrical space without to express historical allusions, reconstruct historical events, and bridge the gaps hidden between remembered and forgotten history in Venus.