[NEohioPAL]PRESS RELEASE: Cleveland Public Theatre presents Suzan-Lori Parks' VENUS

[Dan Kilbane]

For Immediate Release

Contact: Dan Kilbane, Director of Marketing & Public Relations

216/631-2727 ext. 203

dkilbane at cptonline.org

promotional photos available by request

January 15, 2005



Cleveland Public Theatre Presents Pulitzer-Prize Winning Playwright
Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus
Venus

Produced by Cleveland Public Theatre

Written by Suzan-Lori Parks

Directed by Associate Artistic Director Jyana S. Gregory

Previews February 10 & 11; Running February 12 – 26, 2005

Gordon Square Theatre



“Parks is a playwright with an emphatic theatrical voice that demands to be
heard.”

--San Francisco Chronicle



CLEVELAND, OH – Cleveland Public Theatre’s Executive/Artistic Director Randy
Rollison is proud to announce the second Featured Production of the 2004 –
2005 season, Venus, a play by one of the world’s best living playwrights,
Suzan-Lori Parks.  From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Topdog/Underdog comes this grandly theatrical portrait of the 19th Century
historical figure Saartjie Baartman, who was toured through Europe as an
African side-show freak billed as the Venus Hottentot, famous for her
enormous buttocks. Playful, shocking, sweet and sometimes cruel, the play
deals candidly with oppression. However, Venus is neither a saintly martyr
nor a hapless victim.  The title character is played by one of Cleveland’s
favorite local actresses, Equity performer Nina Domingue, and directed by
CPT Associate Artistic Director Jyana S. Gregory.  Running in the historic
Gordon Square Theatre, Venus previews February 10 and 11, and opens
Saturday, February 12, 2005.



In Parks’ story of Venus, Baartman is introduced as a young woman, taken
from her home in what is now South Africa, brought to London in 1810, and
shown as a sideshow freak.  Objectified and abused, Baartman is resilient
throughout the ups and downs of her fate, emerging as a character with
incredible dignity.   She remains determined to “make a mint,” enthralled by
the attention and yearning to be loved.  She eventually goes to court,
fighting for her right to exhibit herself.  Within this take on Baartman
lies the true magic of Parks’ dramaturgy:  this character who begins the
play as a forgotten tidbit from history becomes for the audience a charming,
flesh and blood woman plagued by the follies of her heart but nourished from
an incredible power within.  Written in a dizzyingly theatrical language
combining African-American rhythms with a keen ear for poetry, Venus comes
to life with force on the stage, bringing us a story of love, loss, grief
and strength and the story of a woman made voiceless by history.



In addition to CPT’s production of Venus, the theatre is organizing a series
of community events that will generate dialogue on the themes that resonate
throughout the play:  racism, sexism, objectification, colonialism, and
medical ethics.  Programming will range from public meetings off-site at
partner organizations around town, as well as panel discussions and
post-show talkbacks with the audience at CPT. Partner organizations include
Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland State University, Oberlin College, Case
Western Reserve University, and Cuyahoga County Public Library.  Detailed
information about the community events series is available at
www.cptonline.org.  A separate press release highlighting the Venus
community events is forthcoming.



Join CPT for Opening Night (Saturday, February 12)!  New this year:
performance at 7pm, then a party catered by some of Cleveland’s best
restaurants.  With the Opening Night moved to an earlier time, CPT
strengthens its commitment to make theatre a social event, and not with the
same old kind of party.  Tickets for Opening Night are $35.



Suzan-Lori Parks (Playwright) is a playwright, songwriter, screenwriter and
novelist - her first novel, Getting Mother's Body, was recently published by
Random House. She was the recipient of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for
her play Topdog/Underdog, as well as a 2001 MacArthur "genius grant." Her
other plays include Fucking A, In the Blood, The America Play, Venus, and
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World. Her first feature
film, Girl 6, was directed by Spike Lee. A graduate of Mount Holyoke
College, where she studied with James Baldwin, she has taught creative
writing in universities across the country, including the Yale School of
Drama, and she heads the Dramatic Writing Program at CalArts. She is
currently writing an adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel Paradise for Oprah
Winfrey, and the musical Hoopz for Disney. She lives in Venice Beach,
California, with her husband, blues musician Paul Scher, and their pit bull,
Lambchop.



Nina Domingue (The Venus Hottentot) is a native New Orleanian.  She was last
seen on the CPT stage in her solo show Mo Pas Connin – or Torment, Nickel
and Dimed, Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mrs  Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge.
She recently performed in Karamu House’s For Colored Girls….  Domingue
earned her B.A. in Theatre Arts from Dillard University.  She was the first
African-American woman to graduate from the Master’s Program for Acting at
West Virginia University in August 2002, where she began to develop Mo Pas
Connin - or Torment.  She is currently part of CPT’s education staff, and
formerly worked at Great Lakes Theater Festival as a part of their
actor-teacher program.  "It is important to me to be a part of work that
establishes a more normative standard of representation for women;
especially women of color.  To deny any of our stories is to ultimately deny
our own humanity."  Domingue is a member of Actor’s Equity, the professional
union of actors and stage managers.



CPT commits to offering early career directors and designers from around the
country the opportunity to work on its stages through the Up Next Program.
With Venus, three individuals are part of this program:  Director Jyana S.
Gregory (also CPT’s Associate Artistic Director), Set Designer Sergio
Villegas (who divides his time between Mexico City and New York City), and
Costume Designer Junghyun Georgia Lee (who works out of New York City and
designed costumes for CPT’s Dojoji).  Upon graduating from a training
program, emerging artists are usually relegated to assisting directors and
designers, or to banding together to form their own companies and
self-produce work.  Although CPT supports resident lighting, costume and
sound designers, the theatre also opens its doors to other artists.  Through
Up Next, CPT brings in directors and designers from outside the community,
stimulating new ideas in those who live and work in Cleveland, as well as
the guest designers.  Gregory, Villegas, and Lee will work with CPT resident
designer Trad A Burns, who will design the lighting for Venus.



Jyana S. Gregory (Director) is currently in residence at CPT serving as the
Associate Artistic Director through a New Generations grant from Theatre
Communications Group.  Last season she directed the critically acclaimed
Dojoji, an adaptation of a Japanese legend of love, betrayal and
supernatural transformation.  In New York she co-founded ACTIVE EYE, a
performance company dedicated to creating innovative theatrical productions
fully integrating music, text and movement and drawing from East Asian and
Western performance traditions (www.activeeye.org).  For ACTIVE EYE she
directed Buchner’s Woyzeck at the Culture Project.  Other recent directing
credits include Siegfried’s Nerve, an adaptation of Wagner's Siegfried
(Target Margin Theater's Lab Festival) Mozart's Cosi fan tutte (Chrysalis
Opera, Boston), ACTIVE EYE's inaugural production, Senjo: an opera in four
parts (Ontological Theatre), Zeami's Izutsu (Lincoln Center Directors Lab,
HERE), and Handke's Kaspar (Blueprint Series, Ontological Theatre).  She
assisted Chen Shi-Zheng on the development and production of The Orphan of
Zhao (Lincoln Center Theater/Lincoln Center Festival) as well as the
development of Snow in June (American Repertory Threater), David Herskovits
on the remount of The Sandman and The Marriage of Figaro (Target Margin
Theater), and Diane Paulus on the remount of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music (Chicago Opera Theater).  When she first arrived
in New York she worked for Richard Foreman on his production of Bad Boy
Nietzsche!.  Jyana is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab.  She is
a graduate of Yale University and has studied traditional and contemporary
performing arts in Japan.



Sergio Villegas (Set Designer) Works as a scenic and lighting designer in
Mexico City. He received his undergraduate degree from Ithaca College, NY,
where he designed productions such as Summer and Smoke, A Little Night Music
and L’incoronazione di Poppea. He graduated from the M.F.A. program at the
Yale School of Drama. Among his favorite productions there: The Great
Magician, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV Part 1, (L)Imitations of Life,
Endgame and The Wild Party. In the U.S., he recently designed The King Stag
for the Yale Repertory Theater, The Comedy of Errors for Milwaukee
Shakespeare and the lighting design for the world premiere of Historias
Sórdidas at the Watercourt Stage in Los Angeles, for Mexico’s Theatre of the
Deaf. Current and upcoming projects in Mexico City include ¡Paah!, El Aute
de Amar, Mom’s the Word, Mi Lugar en el Mundo and Jekyll and Hyde. He is a
teacher of Scenic Design at the National University of Mexico. More about
his work can be found at www.sergiovillegas.com.



Junghyun Georgia Lee (Costume Design): Born in South Korea, Georgia started
designing for the stage in Canada. Now she lives in New York City,
collaborating with fellow designers, writers and directors. Her recent works
include: costume designs for Sans-culottes in the Promised Land (Humana
Festival 2004), Caligari Is Coming to Town (Northeastern University), That’s
What I Call A Storm (Edge Theatre), Omnium Gatherum (Variety Art), Big Love
(Princeton University), Assassins (set and costume, Berkshire Theatre
Festival), Getting Into Heaven (set, The Flea), Somewhere Someplace Else
(Clubbed Thumb), Woyzeck (ACTIVE EYE), Omnium Gatherum (Naked Angels), Small
Bodies, Ruin Those Pretty Hands (Interart), Siegfried’s Nerve (set and
costume, Target Margin Theater), Cheap Sunglasses (McCarter Theater), Heaven
(Yale Repertory Theater). At Yale School of Drama she designed The
Misanthrope (costume), Hamlet (set), Pericles (set) and many productions at
Yale Cabaret. Georgia is the associate set and costume designer for Shen Wei
Dance Art (American Dance Festival and Lincoln Center Festival in 2004).



The cast is a mix of familiar faces to CPT audiences, as well as new members
in the CPT family:   Maggie Arndt (Akron’s Illusion Factory, training at
Williamstown Theater Festival, SITI, and the British Academy of Dramatic
Arts); Cornelius Bethea (CPT’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and musical theatre major
at Baldwin-Wallace College); Jazmin Corona (CPT’s Dojoji, actor-teacher with
Great Lakes Theater Festival); Nina Domingue; Monte Escalante (Karamu House
Theatre’s Jar the Floor and Bee-Luther Hatchee), Holly Holsinger (a longtime
CPT staffer, performed in A Bright Room Called Day and Blue Sky
Transmission: A Tibetan Book of the Dead, and co-founded Wishhounds
Theatre); Jasper Howard (CPT’s Discordia and teacher in the theatre’s
education program, Brick City); David Loy (CPT’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and
Dojoji); Michael Regnier (CPT’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s
Wild Christmas Binge); Tom Weaver (CPT’s Dojoji, actor-teacher with Great
Lakes Theatre Festival); Robert J. Williams (CPT’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and
Dojoji); and Corene Woodford (Karamu House Theatre’s For Colored Girls…).



Venus is the second of three Featured Productions in CPT’s 2004-05 season.
Along with the other two plays in this series, last fall’s A Bright Room
Called Day, written by Tony Kushner, and The Five Lesbian Brothers’ The
Secretaries, Venus will be staged in Cleveland’s oldest theatre, the Gordon
Square Theatre.  Each of these three productions continue CPT’s commitment
to adventurous theatre.  Featured Productions subscriptions are still
available for the two remaining shows in the series.



Venus is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the
Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.  Additional
support comes from The John P. Murphy Foundation.



Support for the community event series comes from the Ohio Humanities
Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.



Cleveland Public Theatre and its artistic and education programs are
supported in part by The Cleveland Foundation, The George Gund Foundation,
Ohio Arts Council, Greater Cleveland Community Shares, Jakprints, The Free
Times, D.H. Ellison Architects, Forest City Enterprises, Theatre
Communications Group, CoolCleveland.com, National Endowment for the Arts,
The Nord Family Foundation, John P. Murphy Foundation, Kulas Foundation,
Bruening Foundation, Codrington Foundation, Giant Eagle Foundation, Thomas
White Foundation, Family Foundations of Jewish Community Federation, Saint
Ann Foundation, Key Foundation, The Nordson Foundation, Martha Holden
Jennings Foundation, The Heartland Arts Fund, Wolf Family Foundation, The
Meisel Family Foundation, Raymond John Wean Foundation, The Ellie Fund, The
Cyrus Eaton Foundation, Greater Cleveland Community Shares, Capezio/Ballet
Makers Foundation, Nathan and Regina Herman Foundation, Hankins Foundation,
Wolpert Fund of the Cleveland Foundation, The Cleveland Browns Foundation,
The Stocker Foundation, The Murphy Family Foundation, The Cleveland Plain
Dealer, City Architecture, Ron and Deborah Ratner, Joan Horvitz, Roe Green
Foundation, Fifth Third Bank, National City Bank, Marous Brothers
Construction, Stewart and Donna Kohl, and other corporate and individual
contributors.



The mission of Cleveland Public Theatre is to promote a more conscious and
compassionate community through the arts.



Please note that all programming, times and locations are subject to change.







Cleveland Public Theatre Fact Sheet



Production
Venus, written by Suzan-Lori Parks



Artistic Staff
Director, Jyana S. Gregory

Scenic Design, Sergio Villegas

Costume Design, Junghyun Georgia Lee

Lighting Design, Trad A Burns

Production Stage Manager, Eileen Arnold



Cast
The Venus Hottentot:  Nina Domingue

The Baron Docteur/The Man:  David Loy

The Mans Brother/The Mother-Showman/The Grade-School Chum:  Holly Holsinger

The Negro Resurrectionist:  Robert J. Williams

The Chorus:  Maggie Arndt, Cornelius Bethea, Jazmin Corona, Monte Escalante,
Jasper Howard, Michael Regnier, Tom Weaver, and Corene Woodford



Performance Dates and Times
Previews                       Thursday, February 10, 2005
7:30 p.m.

                                    Friday, February 11, 2005
8:00 p.m.

Opening                        Saturday, February 12, 2005
7:00 p.m.

Closing                         Saturday, February 26, 2005
8:00 p.m.

Run                              February 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25,
and 26

Times                           Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.

Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. (except Opening Night, Saturday, February
12 at 7:00 p.m.)

                                    Sundays at 3:00 p.m.



Ticket Prices
Fridays and Saturdays $24

Thursdays and Sundays $19

Previews $14

Under age 25 $10

Pay What You Can Thursdays performances:  up to two people in a party pay at
least $1 each; tickets subject to availability beginning one hour before the
performance



Reservations and Information

216/631-2727



Location
CPT’s Gordon Square Theatre



www.cptonline.org