Robert Davis as "The Negro Resurrectionist"

Though the emphasis is on a Black woman, the role of the one Black man in the play is small but significant. He’s called the “Negro Resurrectionist” because he made his living by digging up graves and supplying the corpses to doctors and scientists for study. This illegal activity is used against him when he is threatened with arrest if he doesn’t cooperate in providing her corpse for Baron Docteur. Venus is ill and imprisoned, and as her jailer he is her last human contact.

To director O’Hara, his predicament is evidence that “Black men are in the same system of colonization. Though he wants to help Venus, how can he protect a Black woman when he’s in the same oppressive system?”