Rachael Carnes has productions across the U.S., U.K., Canada and Asia, and invitations to the Inge Theatre Festival, the Midwestern Dramatists Center, the Mid-America Theater Conference, the American Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference New Play Development Series and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, as well as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Playwriting Intensive. Rachael’s award-winning play Partner Of— is published by the Coachella Review, and was featured in the 2019 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival in New York City. Her play Egg in Spoon will be published in the Coachella Review and her plays Ice Front and Curbed will be published in the Silk Road Review. Rachael’s full-length play Canopy enjoyed staged readings at the WriteON Festival in Cambridge, U.K. and the Parsons Nose Theatre in Pasadena, and her play Practice House had a staged reading at Oregon Contemporary Theater, and is a semi-finalist for the 2019 New Dramatists Princess Grace Award. Rachael is the founder and editor of CodeRedPlaywrights, a consortium of writers across the country, responding to gun violence. She and her family live in Oregon.

Contrapposto

Characters:

SANDRO BOTTICELLI, aka Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, member of the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Painter of “The Birth of Venus”. Man, 40’s.
VENUS, Roman goddess of love, beauty, prosperity, fertility and victory. Woman. Ageless. ​

Setting:

Florence, Italy

Time:

1485

contrapposto: an asymmetrical arrangement of the human figure in which the line of the arms and shoulders contrasts with, while balancing, those of the hips and legs.

Lights up on an artist’s studio, circa 1485. 

SANDRO holds a palette and paintbrush. 

VENUS stands in a kiddie pool. 

SANDRO
I need you to stand with most of your weight on your left foot.

VENUS
Like this?

SANDRO
Good, yes, your shoulders and hips twist off-axis from the hips and legs.

VENUS
Sandy—

SANDRO
Now cover your patata with this cloth and —

VENUS
Please don't call my vagina a potato?

SANDRO
Stand on your left foot! Right arm up like this, covering your mammella.

VENUS
They’re not udders.

SANDRO
Look down and to the right. No - Don’t look at me.

VENUS
I could use some context. For this one, am I napping in the forest or taking a bath in the forest?

SANDRO
You’re a wet baby woman, born fully-formed, rising out of the sea!

VENUS
Wonderful.

SANDRO
I don't like that tone.

VENUS
I’m just tired of embodying erotic pleasure while recreating the platonic ideals of antiquity.

SANDRO
Put your weight on your left foot.

VENUS
Women are more than the sacred and the profane —

SANDRO
You are Venus. Your name means “to honor, to try to please.”

VENUS
I’m standing like this.

SANDRO
You can’t do that. You look like a King, like a warrior. It’s ridiculous!

VENUS
Then I want to sit on the footstool with the pepper mill.

SANDRO
My patron from the Medici family sits on the foot stool. You stand in the clam shell!

VENUS
I can’t.

SANDRO
What do you mean, “You can’t?" That’s what I’m paying you to do.

VENUS
My standing with my weight on one leg in that clam shell is going to have lasting repercussions on the way women are represented in the coming centuries. It’s not worth the money.

SANDRO
You’re born of sea foam, okay? You are the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and the balance of life.

VENUS
Mars gets a helmet! He gets armor.

SANDRO
Your boyfriend is the God of War. You are the Goddess of Love.

VENUS
He’s not my boyfriend. That’s just a tabloid rumor.

SANDRO
Everybody knows about it. Mars is a catch. Strong, virile, allows crops to grow —

VENUS
And Mars gets to stand on two feet with his arm in the air and his fist on his hip, like this —

SANDRO
Stop that! Your job is to absorb and temper the male essence!

VENUS
Mars gets a shield. He gets a sword! What do I get? A stupid pink hanky to cover my —

SANDRO
Your potato unites the opposites of male and female affection.

VENUS
I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m strong, capable. Give me the same respect you give Mars!

SANDRO
Mars is fiery and active. You’re more — benign. We need you to seem vulnerable and open.

VENUS
But I control military victories. I determine sexual success. When the people pray for good fortune and prosperity, it’s me they look to. So why can’t I look back out to them?

SANDRO
I’m growing weary of this chatter.

VENUS
I want someone to depict me as a protector —with character and dignity — I want clothes!

SANDRO
Gimme gimme! It’s always the same with you. We paint you on murals, we put your face into mosaics — All those little itty-bitty pieces! — And we pray to you at our household shrines. When girls come of age, they sacrifice their toys to you. “Bye, dolly,” they say. “I’m a woman now!” Brides offer you gifts before their wedding nights. But that’s just not good enough!

VENUS
I want to be acknowledged for my contributions. I want to be equal.

SANDRO
You’re the goddess of sewers! The slang word for the female pudendum is named after you!

VENUS
Do you even know where the clitoris is?

SANDRO
It's somewhere under the pink hanky!

VENUS
I’m tired of this fugitive, momentary pose.

SANDRO
This is who you are.

VENUS
You have a chance to do something different. To show me as complete, as complicated, with a range of thoughts and emotions. You can depict me as a sentient being!

SANDRO
Look, there are plenty of girls who would be glad to have this gig.

VENUS
But I am Venus! Saturn chopped off my father’s testicles, and threw them in the ocean — And my father’s julienned man parts mixed with sea water and here I am!

SANDRO
You know what? This is not working out. I can bring life, and I can destroy it! I’m gonna just pay you for the week, and you can go.

VENUS
If it weren’t for my courage, my determination, my powerful, sexual energy, there would be no Greece, no Rome, no Middle Ages — Without me, there would be no Renaissance. And if there’s no Renaissance there’s no Sandy Botticelli —

SANDRO
We have built you temples and held festivals in your honor!

VENUS
And that is why, in this portrait of me, I want you to show me standing on my own two feet, with my fist on my hip, and my sword raised in the air. Give me a sword, or I will curse you, and your stupid painting.

SANDRO
But my painting is really coming together! I’ve got all the pieces: The lady with the big sheet, ready to cover your nakedness. I worked out the clam shell. It looks great. And look — I figured out how to show wind, okay? Not that you care! But I mean, see these two people, hanging out in the sky and blowing? That is fucking amazing.

VENUS lights incense.

VENUS
(Dancing, with lit incense.) O Venus, the queen of Cnidus and Paphos, spurn your beloved Cyprus, and summoned by copious incense, come to my lovely shrine!

SANDRO
Are you praying to yourself?

VENUS
And let that passionate boy of yours, Cupid, and the Graces with loosened zones—

SANDRO
Loosened zones?

VENUS stops dancing.

VENUS
Do you want this painting to sell?

SANDRO
Yes.

VENUS
Do you want it to be hung in museums?

SANDRO
What’s a museum?

VENUS
Do you want it to be replicated? Turned into a meme? Do you want it to be made into refrigerator magnets?

SANDRO
I think so?

VENUS
Do you want it to be famous?

SANDRO
It’s my dream.

VENUS
Then pray to me. Do it!

SANDRO
I won’t —

VENUS
Then I refuse to put my weight on my left foot.

SANDRO
But — I need you.

VENUS
I’m leaving.

VENUS extinguishes the burning incense. (Maybe on her palm?)

SANDRO
Graceful Venus. Indulgent Venus!

VENUS
Go on.

SANDRO
Genial Venus —

VENUS
I’m crying.

SANDRO
(Crying.) We implore thee, embracing this thy altar —

VENUS
Bending upon our knees —

SANDRO
No.

VENUS
You want this painting to be remembered? Then get on your knees.

SANDRO falls to his knees.

SANDRO
Bending upon our knees, that thou wilt receive us into thy guardianship, and be our protector; that thou wilt punish those wretches who have set at nought thy temple, and that thou wilt suffer us to occupy this thy altar with thy permission. Hold us not in scorn!

VENUS
Say you’re sorry.

SANDRO
For what?

VENUS
I want you to apologize — For the way representing me this way will perpetuate the myth that women are weak, and that they should be economically dependent on men —

SANDRO
Well, you are made of testicles and sea water.

VENUS
Forcing me to stand around in this clam shell naturalizes the imbalance of power —

SANDRO stands.

SANDRO
You have a role to perform. Now take your clothes off.

VENUS
No! You take your clothes off.

SANDRO
By my authority —

VENUS
You look faint.

SANDRO
Quit stalling. Get naked.

VENUS
Why don’t you lie down on this couch?

SANDRO
We both know the jig is up.

VENUS
You’ll paint me however you want. And that’s your power. But without me, you are nothing.

SANDRO
Did you spend your entire life studying painting? Are the Medicis commissioning you? I don’t think so! I’m holding the paintbrush. I mix the paints. I am invested with all the prestige, right, and permission. My work is holy scripture! Sanctified doctrine! This is my domain — Not yours.

VENUS
And in your command, I lose my subjectivity.

SANDRO
You’re the center of the painting!

VENUS
My body placed there, divorced from head and heart, an open invitation. Do you like this? Hey.

SANDRO
When you stand like that, I feel warm inside.

VENUS
But I don’t want to beckon! I want to lead!

SANDRO
You’re already doing a great job representing Purity and Desire —

VENUS
I’m sick of it. My body is my own!

SANDRO
So touchy!

VENUS
My body is not a site entitled to the men around me —

SANDRO
Be that as it may, you will obey me.

VENUS
Why should I?

SANDRO
Because I am your god. This is how it is, and how it forever will be. I am your midwife, bringing you helpless and mewling into the world, pulling you from the sea into being, and trapping you, here, forever, to be gazed upon.

VENUS
I want to stand straight, like this, with my shoulders back and my chin up.

SANDRO
God, you’re beautiful.

VENUS
Stop objectifying me! I want to look out confidently at the viewer. Why won’t you let me?

SANDRO
Are you kidding? The world's not ready for that!

VENUS
How do you know?

SANDRO
Now be a good girl. Eyes over here. No — Down and to the right.

VENUS
I am not doing this.

SANDRO
What choice do you have?

VENUS
Put my weight on my left foot. Lean, hip out.

SANDRO
Use the hanky. Cover one of your breasts, but leave the other. That’s good. Lovely!

VENUS
Men control the camera. You write the words. Decide the terms. Women are the object.

SANDRO
What’s a camera? Now take your gaze to your right, and down, away from the viewer.

VENUS
No. I'm looking right at you.

Lights up. End of play.