The Sculptor – Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh
A fascinating introduction to the world of ‘the anatomical Venus’, we are immediately presented in glorious projected technicolour with an 18th-century reclining beauty complete with pearls, ecstatic expression and lift-out intestines. Not So Nice! Theatre company present The Sculptor, written by Charlotte Smith and Directed by Grace Baker. Fashioned from seven anatomically correct layers, life sized and made of wax, but with real hair, the Venus was a ready alternative (to cadavers) for the keen medical students of the day to pull apart: heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach, intestines, ending in a teeny foetus, curled in the womb.
Our short play tonight focuses on the fascination of this era, in which the study of nature was also the study of philosophy, and where a dead body cre...