Venus In Fur (a play by David Ives)

[Dave (imported)]

Venus in Fur

is a one-act, two-person play written by David Ives... It is sexy, witty, and literate. An exploration of human sexuality that does not reduce love to trite forms and shallow acts.

It begins with a playwright (Thomas) trying to cast the lead in his play based on the 1870 novel “Venus in Furs” by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Sacher-Masoch is the source of the word Masochism. Thomas, the writer, is on the phone describing his lack of success when a last, very late, and absolutely positively ditzy actress arrives in a thunderclap and with bag of tricks. She is like every shallow girl who has a cellphone and a potty mouth. She reveals that her name is Vanda, in her own disheveled manner, full of attitude, fiery and determined to audition with a script, a bag of costumes, and an attitude.

Coincidently, the character in Thomas' play is named Vonda. She persuades Thomas to let her audition with him as her foil.

What ensues is an audition that blends both the real life characters with the play's two characters -- Vonda and her paramour Herr Kushemski in 1870's Austria and Thomas and Vanda in the audition space. Herr Kushemski has this fixation from an Auntie who spanked him with a switch when he was young. He desires a Venus/Aphrodite, wants to be her slave, and wants to possess her as she possesses him.

The play is a sexual tour de force of domination, sexuality, attitudes. Who is in control and who is being controlled is the subject of a funny and devastatingly sexy power play between Actor and Director, between Master/Mistress and slave, and the real and imagined. ARE we watching two people act upon the stage or are we watching the seduction of a mortal by the goddess Venus/Aphrodite?