Venus In Fur

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No, I didn’t get the name wrong, that’s the title of a play on Broadway that I saw a few weeks ago.  It is a two person, no intermission play about a playwright who is auditioning actresses to be Wanda in a rendition of the old book by Sacher-Masoch.  And I have to say, it is tremendous.

There are so many different layers to the characters, so many things they realize about themselves, so many things they bring to light about BDSM, play, beauty, gender identification, etc.  I could not recommend it more highly.  It is the first kind of any media I’ve ever seen, read, heard, etc., that gave a clear idea of what a healthy BDSM dynamic can embody.  And it made the concept digestible for the general (well, maybe New York theater-going) public.  I did infact, see it last year when it was playing in the East Village (the same actress was Wanda) and bringing it to Broadway definitely made it a bit more “accessible” I suppose.  The actors seemed to be talking more slowly and the jokes may be more slapstick, but all in all, I enjoyed it again.   Even if there was a 70 year old lady coughing her lungs out in the front row.

It made me think about what exactly men are wanting not just from women in general, but specifically in a BDSM context.  I feel that (as I’ve written before) certain men need (and perhaps women do too) to be submissive to a goddess-like figure.  If you think about the imagery in many of our photos, they do tend to invoke a sort of Kali-like figure.  An unforgiving, yet seductive goddess whose wrath is imminent.  However, there are many such archetypical figures a domme photo may take on.  In mine, I tend to inject them with playfulness and humor.  Many people stick with the vinyl or latex-clad untouchable persona, and others still even pose in bikinis.

However!  Back to the play…  It deconstructs the book in a very charming way, even raising questions many feminist theorists would raise about it, such as:  is he forcing her into a dominant role, or does she really want it?  Therefore, is the role of ice queen “dominant” in this sense even really dominant if it is specifically for another’s pleasure?  After this, a series of twists and turns take place (oh, I don’t want to ruin it for you, but I sooo do!), and we are left at the end wondering whether (or perhaps knowing outright) a goddess had just visited him in the night, reflecting back to him his prejudices, his simplifications, his banalities, and his sexuality.

It is simply exquisite.  Get tickets now!  And think of me…

xoxo.