REP Stage presents
VENUS IN FUR
BY
Suzanne Beal & Joseph Ritsch
Co-Producing Artistic Directors
DAVID IVES
DIRECTED BY JOSEPH RITSCH
Nancy Tarr Hart
Managing Director
Lisa Wilde
Dramaturg
REP stage
REGIONAL THEATRE IN RESIDENCE
Howard Community College
10901 Little Patuxent Parkway
Columbia, MD 21044
Tickets: 443.518.1500
WWW.REPSTAGE.ORG
“What do you know about my nature except what you’ve
decided about it?” –Vanda Dunayev Venus in Fur
Things are not always what they seem…or are they?
Venus in Fur I couldn’t put it down.
I was instantaneously drawn into David Ives’ smart,
funny, sexy, and dangerous play. But what I was most
interested in as a director was the challenge for an
audience to be imaginative, thus giving them a wonderful opportunity of weaving their own tale. Ives’
brilliantly creates a magical world within the little run-down rehearsal room
of the play’s setting that is constantly shifting, keeping its viewers on their
toes. Nothing is more exciting to me in the theatre than work that asks
questions and allows an audience to draw conclusions of their own without
being told how to think or feel. Is Vanda really Venus? Are we watching realclap leaves us all in darkness? I’ll let you decided for yourself, but again,
remember, things are not always what they seem…or are they?
- Joseph Ritsch, Co-Artistic Director
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Play
How Venus Got Her Fur by David Ives........................................3
Venus/Aphrodite.................................................................................4
Sacher-Masoch...................................................................................5
References............................................................................................6
Themes.................................................................................................9
2 . Venus in Fur STUDY GUIDE
The Production
Design...................................................................................................13
Everywhere in Chains.....................................................................15
Theater Etiquette..............................................................................16
VENUS IN FUR
The Play
How Venus Got Her Fur by David Ives
My play Venus in Fur began with a very powerful, very bad
idea.
wardly in period and period dress. By the way, for anyone
Venus in Fur? Isn’t it Venus
in FURS Venus in FUR has always sounded better, and
more natural to me, than the uglier Venus in FURS. And
these days, we don’t say that a woman is wearing furs, we
say she’s wearing fur or a fur. Nuff, or muff, said.
A few years ago I re-read Histoire d’O, the notorious erotic French novel of the 1950s. Story of O (as it’s known in
mits for two hundred more pages, the classical severity of
the book’s style and the odd purity of the main character’s
commitment lending the novel an air of spirituality, of larger
passed through stations of sometimes gruesome erotic engagement, approaches a state of near personal extinction.
Somehow I got the idea that all this would make for a
performance art. Kabuki! Robert Wilson! High pretension!
Well, luckily for me the rights to the book were unavailable
because I’m apparently not the only fool who ever dreamt
because of the nature of the material. It was bad because
the story is fundamentally undramatic. If your main character
submits on page one, where’s the drama? So, yes, it might
have been theatrical. But dramatic? Never.
Venus im Pelz, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s notorious 1870
novelization of his own submissive erotic entanglement.
Venus in Fur
prose is as Teutonically leaden as velvet sandbags) but it
is enough of a milestone that Sacher-Masoch put the M in
S&M, lending his name, because of the book, to the term
Severin and Vanda, the two lovers of the plot, seemed to
dramatize itself without the intervention of a playwright’s
Story of O, Venus in Fur sparks with the friction
of two buttoned-up people in an erotic power play who
challenge, resist and disagree with each other even while
bound by mutual sexual attraction. That sure sounded
dramatic to me.
So I set about adapting the book for four actors—two to
play Severin and Vanda, two for the side roles, all straight for
longtime collaborator the actor/director/wonder Walter
Bobbie, whose taste and judgment I trust absolutely. Walter
didn’t know the Sacher-Masoch novel but quickly read the
script and told me essentially this: that the relationship
between Severin and Vanda was fascinating, but that the
play I’d made out of them seemed both uncontemporary
and too literal. For what is erotic and suggestive on a page
(e.g., whips and chains) can be stunningly unstageable if not
ridiculous under lights. And what does this relationship of
1870, however complex, have to do with us in the early
21st century? Walter apologized, I remember, for not being
seriously indeed.
I pondered the matter for some weeks or months with no
real idea how to use Walter’s thoughts to readdress or
reshape what I’d written, but during this time the story of
Venus in Fur, the relationship of Severin and Vanda, was still
very present to me. Since their plight wouldn’t let me go, I
felt certain that I was bound (so to speak) to go back to it.
And then one day I did, though I don’t know what spurred
me to take the route I took, which was to strip away everything but my two lovers and create a frame story set today
in an audition room where a playwright seeks an actress to
play Vanda in his adaptation of, what else, Venus in Fur. In
in 10 days or so.
From those words, it was but an apparent picosecond to
picosecond to the Friedman on 47th Street. And as we
proceeded deeper and deeper into Sacher-Masoch’s erotic
Black Forest, we met up with Nina Arianda on our way, an
actress who not only seemed created to play Vanda, but
whose name actually rhymed with that of our heroine…
But that’s another tale entirely.
3
VENUS IN FUR
The Play
Venus/Aphrodite
The Roman goddess Venus and
her Greek counterpart, Aphrodite, represent love, beauty,
sexuality, and prosperity. There
are several different versions of
her birth story. In some mythology, she was born of sea-foam
and stepped out of the ocean at
daughter of Zeus and Dione.
According to Hesiod’s Theogony,
them into the sea, and she arose
from the sea foam (aphros).
Aphrodite (Greek) is only regarded as a goddess of love, beauty and sexuality whereas Venus (the Roman counterpart) is also perceived as goddess of
vegetation, fertility and a patroness of prostitutes other than being a goddess of love, beauty and sexuality.
Venus had many lovers such as the gods Mars, Bacchus, and Vulcan (Ares, Dionysus, and Hephaestus) as well as humans
such as Anchises. She birthed Aeneas, the hero of the Aeneid, and many minor gods and goddesses. Venus and Aphrodite were central to many religious rites and festivals in Rome and Greece, respectively. Venus continues to appear
works.
Venus with a Mirror by Titian
The Italian Renaissance artist Titian painted Venus with a
Mirror in 1555. A celebration of the female form, the painting
portrays Venus wrapped in fur, gazing at herself in the mirror
held by her cherubs. In the novella Venus in Furs the narrator
of the frame story is fascinated with a painting he sees in Severin’s home that is inspired by the piece. This image of Venus
serves as a motif in the novella and the play, inspiring the title.
4 . Venus in Fur STUDY GUIDE
The Play
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Venus in Furs (German: Venus im Pelz) is a novella by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the best
known of his works. The novel was to be part of an epic series that Sacher-Masoch envisioned called Legacy of Cain. Venus in Furs was part of Love,
dominance and sadomasochism, and character inspiration heavily from Sacher-Masoch’s own life. Wanda von Dunajew,
the novel’s central female character, was modelled after Fanny Pistor, who was an emerging literary writer. The two met
on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication. The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking
to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how
to break him of his fascination with cruel women by reading a manuscript, Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man. This manuscript tells of a man, Severin von Kusiemski, who is so infatuated with a woman, Wanda von Dunajew, that he asks to be
enthusiastically embraces the idea, although at the same time she disdains Severin for allowing her to do so. (Wikipedia.
com)
The novella is available as an e-book on Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8vnsf10h.htm
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VENUS IN FUR
The Play
References
Venus in Furs
songs inspired by Sacher- Masoch’s novella. http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=AwzaifhSw2c
Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girl child in the dark
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart
Downy sins of streetlight fancies
Ermine furs adorn the imperious
Severin, Severin awaits you there
I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears
Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark
Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart
Severin, Severin, speak so slightly
Severin, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip, in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now plead for me
I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears
Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girl child in the dark
Severin, your servant comes in bells
Please don’t forsake him
Book of Judith
Testament excluded by Jews and Protestants. The book
contains numerous historical anachronisms, which is why
many scholars now accept it as non-historical; it has been
The story revolves around Judith, a daring and beautiful
widow, who is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not
trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors. She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes, with whom she slowly ingratiates
herself, promising him information on the Israelites. Gaining his trust, she is allowed access to his tent one night
as he lies in a
drunken stupor.
She decapitates
him, then takes
his head back
to her fearful
countrymen. The
Assyrians, having
lost their leader,
disperse, and
Israel is saved.
Painting by
Cristofano Allori
6 . Venus in Fur STUDY GUIDE
The Play
References
Faust is an ancient German myth about a man who sells
his soul to the devil for complete power and knowledge.
Ives is probably referencing the Goethe version which
Scandalous Women
A woman with family ties to the Roman Emperors Nero,
Messalina was the wife of Em-
the dangers of engaging with supernatural powers.
The Lyric Suite Allan Berg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crLFn2muMm4
The Lyric Suite is a six-movement work for string
using methods derived from Schoenberg’s twelve-tone
technique. Though publicly dedicated to Alexander von
Zemlinsky (from whose Lyric Symphony it quotes), the
orchestra.
Simonides of Keos wrote that change in human circumstances happens more quickly than the turning of
The Bacchae:
about the return of the god Dionysus (god of sex,
wine and music – also thunder) to exact revenge on
the family of Agave and Pentheus who have questioned
Dionysus’ divinity and prevented his followers—the
Bacchantes – from worshipping him. He wants the
rational and alpha male Pentheus to explore his female
and irrational side by dressing as a woman and observing the Bacchantes’ practices. They mistake him for
an animal and his mother and the others tear him to
pieces. The quotes on p. 51 are from The Bacchae.
through her connections, both familial and sexual.
Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite competed to see which one
was the most fair of the goddesses; the winner would be
awarded a golden apple. Zeus chose a mortal man, Paris,
to judge the contest. Aphrodite bribed him with the offer
of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, so
Paris bestowed the golden apple upon Aphrodite.
Aphrodite desired a young man named Anchises, so she
turned herself into a human and they had two children.
When she returned to her godly state, and Anchises
started boasting about sleeping with a goddess, Zeus
struck him down with a thunderbolt. According to myth,
Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world, and
her kidnapping by Paris with Aphrodite’s approval led to
the Trojan War.
Aspasia was the mistress of the Greek statesman,
Pericles, and some say that she ran a brothel in Athens.
Aspasia’s insistence that she be treated as an equal was
scandalous in Athens, but she still participated actively in
the political life of the city.
Louis XV’s royal mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, wielded much control behind-the scenes of the French Court during
her tenure at Versailles.
7
VENUS IN FUR
The Play
References
Lucrezia Borgia
and later Pope Alexander VI. Lucrezia’s charm, beauty, and political connections gave her some power within the Italian
world of the early 1500s.
Doomed lovers
Tristan and Isolde
Paolo and Francesca adulterous lovers murdered by Paolo’s brother Francesca’s husband and damned to hell in
Dante’s Inferno.
8 . Venus in Fur STUDY GUIDE
The Play
Themes
Metatheatre/Narrative Frames
The use of metatheatre is essential to the effectiveness of David Ives’ Venus in Fur. According to Stuart Davis:
“Metatheatre” is a convenient name for the quality or force in a play which challenges theatre’s claim to be simply
realistic -- to be nothing but a mirror in which we view the actions and sufferings of characters like ourselves, suspending our disbelief in their reality. Metatheatre begins by sharpening our awareness of the unlikeness of life to dramatic art; it may end by making
-- in short, the theatricality -- of the life we live, it marks those frames and boundaries that conventional dramatic realism would
hide. It may present action so alien, improbable, stylized, or absurd that we are forced to acknowledge the estranging frame that
encloses a whole play. It may, on the other hand, break the frame of the “fourth wall” of conventional theatre, reaching out to
assault the audience or to draw it into the realm of the play. It may -- by devices like plays within plays, self-consciously “theatrical”
play, making us speculate on the complexmixture of illusion and reality in our ordinary experience. Any theatrical device can work
(Davis)
Venus in Fur uses a variety of devices which would be categorized as metatheatrical. First, Vanda is an actor and Thomas
is a director being observed within an (unconventional) audition setting. Furthermore, there exists a play within a play (
the one Thomas has written), the action continuously bouncing back and forth between Vanda and Thomas acting out
the play for which she is auditioning and their more natural interactions outside of playing the script. As the inner story
progresses and a dominating arrangement develops the power structures of both storylines blur and dynamics overlap.
Venus in Fur is one of many works that employs the motif of a play within a play. A concise list of other classical works
in which metatheatre is prominent includes:
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Anton Chekhov, The Seagull
Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Tennessee Williams’ The Two Character Play
Alan Ackbourne, A Chorus of Disapproval
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VENUS IN FUR
The Play
Themes
Reality vs. Fantasy
Throughout Venus in Fur, the line between fantasy and reality is constantly blurred, potentially to represent the similariIves uses a myriad of literary and dramatic devices in order to achieve this confusion and to suggest the juxtaposition
between reality and fantasy. Some elements, such as varying light sources, are helpful in distinguishing between the action
further entangle the two worlds. A few of the details to consider are:
-
Light
-
Venus
in Fur, David Ives continues to play with natural light sources from the storm, as well as unnatural sources of light,
transitions between the overlapping action of the play and the play within it as well as declaring who is in power at
certain moments.
Names
The name given to the characters within Venus in Fur suggests critical questions about the play, including where reality
has come to audition to portray. This fact makes the distinction between who she is versus the character Thomas has
Furthermore, the way in which Vanda addresses Thomas is notable. As they read through the scripted contract that
is part of Thomas’ play which establishes that Vanda will be his “madam”, Vanda says: “And from now on I’m going to
call you ‘Thomas’” (Ives 57). Vanda adamantly dismisses Thomas’ correction (“It’s Gregor in the script…” Ives 57) and
given name, again reiterates the fact that fantasy and reality are not necessarily mutually exclusive. By the end, Vanda
goes so far as to refer to him as “Tommy” (Ives 72), a shocking nickname given their rapport thus far, as she criticizes
his work for being “degrading to women” (Ives 72), a real-life concern.
10 . Venus in Fur STUDY GUIDE
The Play
Themes
Power and Gender
VANDA/DUNAYEV:
what Woman will be when she ceases to be men’s slave. When she has the same rights as he, when she’s his equal
in education and his partner in work.When she becomes herself. An individual.- God, old Vanda’s seriously ahead
of her time, isn’t she. (Ives 25)
Power, especially between men and women, is a fundamental theme in David Ives’ Venus in Fur. This fact is reiterated
through a closer look at several resources which he alludes to within the piece (Masoch’s Venus in Furs
tion in different periods with varying sensibilities around gender roles including references to Renaissance art, a play set
in the Victorian era and a modern audition, Ives is able to offer an extensive survey of gender roles and societal expectations. The evolution of Vanda and Thomas’ relationship throughout the play, within all of these contexts, brings awareness to our own understanding and appreciation of gender roles within modern society. Within the script, the playwright character Thomas challenges the fact that the script he’s written is truly about gender power relationships. His
argument, however, seems in some ways to support that it is, regardless of how he looks at it. The following exchange
also points out that these themes are timeless though meanings may change when seen in different contexts.
THOMAS:
thing out there more powerful than we are, and it can run us or it can ruin us. This is a chemical reaction. Two
people meet and ignite each other. Look. I wrote this. I’ve been studying this. I should think i know what my own
play’s about. It’s not making some general statement about men or women.
VANDA: Sex, class, gender, pal.
THOMAS: It’s about a woman who recognizes something in herself
– possibly - and about a man who until he meets her is forced to hide his true self away.
11
VENUS IN FUR
The Play
Themes
David Ives on Auditioning and Venus in Fur
From: www.studiotheatre.org
Ask any actor and they will tell you that auditions are notoriously fraught with unforgiving power dynamics – the director, producer, or playwright who has all the power and the actor who has all the need. Most actors come equipped
with their own personal audition horror stories. From overly authoritarian directors to casting directors more interested in eating lunch than hearing another monologue, auditions can be a brutal experience even for the most seasoned
professional. In Venus in Fur, playwright David Ives sets his adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novella in
funny thing about audition rooms, is that moment—I haven’t tried to name it until right now—that momentwhen actors have walked in, and read their piece, and then turn to look at you and they know, they always
Ives admits, however, that the process is not all fun and games for those on the other side of the table. He admires
actors and their ability to face an often-unfriendly panel of people whose sole purpose it is to judge and critique every
aspect of their looks and talent.
-
In setting Venus in Fur within an audition room, David Ives turns the process on its head giving power to the usually powerless (a choice that would delight any actor).
12 . Venus in Fur STUDY GUIDE
The Production
Design
COSTUME DESIGN By David Burdick
13
VENUS IN FUR
The Production
Design
SET DESIGN, By Daniel Ettinger
Venus in Fur Cast
KathrynTkel
Denotes Member of Actors’ Equity
Association
14 . Venus in Fur STUDY GUIDE
The Production
Everywhere In Chains
What is the nature of passion? Is it always about dominance and submission? Is the quality of our lives connected at
ways that prove just dangerous enough?
Venus im Pelz, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s notorious 1870 novelization of his own submissive erotic entanglement. The novella’s structure demands a metatheatrical, or play within a play, treatment; the narrator has had a visitation of the goddess Venus who mocks his desire for cruel women wearing fur. The narrator describes his dreams to a
friend, Severin, who tells him how to break him of his fascination with cruel women by reading a manuscript, Memoirs of
a Suprasensual Man.
This manuscript chronicles the obsession of a man so infatuated with a woman that he asks to be her slave, and encouradaptation of Masoch’s (as in masochism’s) novella. As the audition progresses, the boundaries between the rehearsal
narrative frameworks, rejecting the limitations of 1870s gender dynamics which suggest that dominance can only be
at present is educating her, is man’s enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she
Ives shrewdly changes the rules of the game as roles are upended in order to examine whether certain erotic behaviors are inherently gender-based or socially created, ultimately asking us to question the nature of power and attraction
between man and woman, lover and lover, worshiper and worshiped.
- Lisa A.Wilde, Production Dramaturg
15
VENUS IN FUR
The Production
Theater Etiquette
Attending the theater will be a positive experience for everyone if you observe a few simple courtesies:
Turn off and put away all electronic devices prior to entering the theater.
Taking photographs and video recording in the theater is prohibited.
Do not place your feet on the seat in front of you.
The actors onstage can see and hear the audience just as well as the audience can see and hear them. Please refrain
from talking or moving around during the performance as it can be distracting to the actors, as well as to other
audience members.
Feel free to respond to the action of the play through appropriate laughter and applause. The actors enjoy this type of
communication from the audience!
Have fun! Attending theater should be an enjoyable experience.
REP stage
REGIONAL THEATRE IN RESIDENCE
Howard Community College
10901 Little Patuxent Parkway Columbia, MD 21044
16