Luminescence Dating

Angela Hart has spent the better part of her career searching for a voluptuous naked Aphrodite sculpted by Praxitiles in the fourth century BC and lost to history

Her colleague and friend Victor Reid, a gay black anthropologist specializing in Queer Theory, steals a broken glazed arm from an excavation led by her professional nemesis, British archaeologist Nigel Edwards, and Angela begins to study it

As the ancient clay arm yields its secrets, these three highly competitive, emotionally charged academics begin to unravel the mystery of the missing statue, unleashing a whole set of desires that are orchestrated and stimulated by the Goddess of Love herself, an aging and world-weary Aphrodite disguised as the museum's cleaning lady

Ultimately the statue is never found, but the heat generated by the search yields its own delicious rewards

REVIEWS

"The play succeeds at conveying the delights of intellectual collaboration. It rattles with sly wit and with the great narrative drama that can be dug from the past. As in Tom Stoppard's cerebral mysteries, there's a satisfying click each time a piece of these puzzles fall into place" ~ NY Times