Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman
Born in South Africa of Dutch descent, Sarah Baartman is a real-life historical character on whose circumstances the play is loosely based; however, it is not a biographical account of her life, and the author uses her situation as a springboard for the themes of the play rather than the reason for the play in of itself.
Sarah has a condition called steatopygia, which deposits large amounts of fatty tissue around the upper thighs and buttocks of the afflicted. She bears a striking physical resemblance to Venus de Milo and for this reason is an object of fascination and gawking when she is out in public.
Sarah is attracted to the possibility of bright lights and fortune and so accepts an offer to travel to London where things don't turn out as planned and she is exploited by first the owner of a sideshow business and secondly by a doctor who wants to study her condition after her death. She is not a very good reader of other people and seems to fall for snake-oil salesmen very easily. Some view her as the exploited, because she is sold a promise of something that never happens, and others view her as the exploiter, because she plays the colonials at their own game and succeeds in leaving South Africa for something better.
She ultimately meets a tragic end, dying alone on the floor of a jail cell.
Mother Showman
Mother Showman is the owner of a very successful sideshow business and covets Sarah for this. She is his ideal kind of "freak" for entertainment and he knows that he will make a great deal of money out of her whilst paying her nothing but board and lodging in return. He "owns" her, not just metaphorically, but legally as well, because the sideshow acts in his sideshow are also his possessions. He is not a particularly attractive character because he exploits those who have afflictions that make their only method of supporting themselves appearing in his sideshows, and being stared at by strangers.
Baron Docteur
At first, Baron Docteur seems like a decent man. He wants to make Sarah his mistress and we believe this to be so that he can "rescue" her from her current predicament and become her owner, thereby both liberating her and allowing her to become his lover. However, his intentions are nowhere near this altruistic. He wants to study Sarah, and learn more about her condition which he believes he will best be able to do after her death. Meanwhile, he takes her as his mistress, but he is a promiscuous man and gives Sarah gonorrhea. He is also a hypocrite, blaming her for contracting the disease rather than himself for giving it to her. He condemns her to solitude in a jail cell where she dies an untimely death, enabling him to get his wish and study her as a medical experiment.
