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By Linda Winer, Staff Writer
THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES. Written and directed by Eve Ensler, production design by Myung Hee Cho, lights by Beverly Emmons. V-Day benefit at Madison Square Garden. Seen Saturday night.
JANE FONDA marveled at the wonders of the birth canal and gave $1 million.
Gloria Steinem agreed to declare “heaven palace” a euphemism for a legendarily unmentionable body part. Glenn Close reclaimed the other four-letter word as a celebratory war cry, and Calista Flockhart defended a woman’s right to wear a really short skirt.
Saturday was “V-Day 2001” at Madison Square Garden, which meant that 70 famous and otherwise admirable females put on their red feather boas to help stop violence against women and lead a pep rally for their genitalia. The inspiration, you probably know, is “The Vagina Monologues,” which creator Eve Ensler has transformed from a set of downtown interview-inspired solos to an off-Broadway staple for visiting actresses and, now, an international philanthropic phenomenon.
Ensler has a good-natured but seriously evangelical mission about a territory often misunderstood, ignored or abused. To anyone raised in the heyday of “Our Bodies, Our Selves” and other bibles of boomer feminism-not to mention the liberated language of Lenny Bruce-many of her revelations may seem somewhat less than revolutionary.
And, yet, Ensler has not merely found a unifying theme for generations of fragmented woman power. In the three years since she began the Valentine’s Day human-rights assault, V-Day has expanded into a force in dozens of American cities, not to mention Belgrade, Bombay, Sarajevo and Capetown.
On Saturday, Oprah Winfrey did a monologue about the women under fundamentalist control in Afghanistan, and there were appearances from ordinary women and girls who suddenly find themselves activists against genital mutilation in Africa. Claire Danes and Julia Stiles did a moving duet about Bosnian rape. Serious emotions and serious money were raised.
Ensler, barefoot in a red satin dress, led a reported 19,000 women and others in an orgiastic “Madison Square Garden moan.” Rosie Perez was particularly irresistible as the furious voice of gynecocracy. The stars-named the “Vulva Choir”-cheered and waited their turns around the raised stage that may have been on loan from a boxing match. The theme was “Take Back the Garden,” which, in this testosterone sanctuary, did not have to be explained.
Unfortunately, the three-hour evening was preceded by an alienating, unprofessional hour of mass chaos at the stadium box office. Sisterhood may be powerful, but, clearly not enough to provide crowd control.
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Interviews conducted by Molly Kawachi
Calista Flockhart
MK: Why did you first get involved with V-Day?
CF: I think primarily because I love women. And I am a woman, so I have a great amount of empathy for them and I want the violence against women to stop.
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls and the youth of America today?
CF: I think it can provide inspiration and empowerment and role models.
MK: What do you think girls today can do to stop the violence?
CF: I think that the most important thing is to become educated. Know that you have power and limits and boundaries and you can stand up for yourself and you can change the world.
Rosie Perez
MK: Why and how did you get involved with V-Day?
RP: Eve Ensler asked me in 1995 to do the first V-Day special, so I joined the troop then, then I did the second opening in New York and then the first one in Los Angeles.
MK: How do you think V-Day affects young women and teenage girls?
RP: It gets people talking about the issues that nobody really wants to talk about in a non-exploitive way. I think some of the talk shows have exploited it and taken the seriousness away from it.
MK: How do you think today’s youth can help stop the violence?
RP: Start being aware, and start standing up for each other. I think that’s the biggest thing. I remember when I was younger, no one would stand up for me. I didn’t feel strong enough to stand up for myself, and I think that’s a good way to start, with support groups. But also just putting the message out there that it’s just not cool, it’s just not alright.
Julia Stiles
MK: How did you get involved with V-Day?
JS: I performed in the play off-Broadway over the summer, and you know anyone who is in the show is invited to participate in V-Day.
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls today?
JS: I hope that it just raises awareness. Just to get women to talk about their vaginas, you know, there’s so much…women need to talk about these issues more and open up and share their stories.
MK: How do you think teenage girls can help stop the violence?
JS: Demand respect and demand to be treated well. I think it starts on a personal level.
MK: What was your favorite part of the show?
JS: Oh, Queen Latifah, oh god I love her, she’s just incredible.
MK: And what would your vagina wear and say?
JS: Um, let me think…my vagina would say “slow down”, and my vagina would wear satin.
Melissa Joan Hart
MK: How did you get involved with V-Day?
MJH: I did the play last summer.
MK: And how do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls today?
MJH: I hope they will be more aware of their bodies and more empowered. Just have a better self esteem about themselves and just be aware of what’s going on around them and what they can do with themselves.
Claire Danes
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls today?
CD: Umm…jeepers, that’s a good question…well I hope that they feel inspired and I hope that it allows them to go deep into their bodies and release whatever pain they may have suffered from and celebrate their vaginas and their womanhood.
MK: How do you think teenagers can help stop the violence?
CD: Well, men and women…I think women have to talk about the fact, they have to admit that they’ve been abused and injured and they have to recognize that it’s wrong and they have to defend themselves against it happening in the future. And men have just got to listen to women and have got to respect them and have got to embrace them for who they are and not objectify them. And none of that Machismo nonsense.
Joan Osborne
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls today?
JO: Well, I would hope that it will give them a starting point to really have a greater courage about expressing themselves and being comfortable with their bodies and everything that that means with being comfortable with their bodies and being comfortable with themselves in the world, it’s incredible how many pressures young girls and young women are under, the piece that was performed tonight really brings that home. I think young girls and women live in this sort of mine field, what you’re supposed to do, what you’re not supposed to do, what’s acceptable, what are people going to say about you. So there’s a lot of pressure and I think that with a piece like this, it could give these girls a different perspective to just appreciate themselves and start from that and not worry too much about what everyone says.
MK: And how do you think teenagers can help today to stop the violence?
JO: Teenagers can support each other. I think there’s a lot of behavior that teenagers will let by because they think it’s not cool to object, they’ll see somebody being abusive to someone else verbally, and they won’t say anything because they think it’s not cool to get involved. I think that’s the first step: to stand up for someone you think is being picked on or treated unfairly and it takes a lot of courage to do that. And then also, if you can reach out to people across other cultures. One of the great things that happened tonight was that these great women from Africa and Afghanistan came out onto the stage and they talked about the reality in their countries and what they’re doing on their own to make their lives better. So I’m sure there are ways for younger people to get involved with those causes as well, but I also think it really does start at home, at school, just in your own world as a teenager.
MK: So, what was your favorite part of the show?
JO: I think when the three women from Kenya came onstage and the one woman talked about escaping female genital mutilation and saying that she wouldn’t allow herself to be cut. And the other woman talked about how she is walking through the countryside and is trying to get people to accept a different kind of ritual that allows a woman to go from girlhood to womanhood without being violated and mutilated and trying to make that part of their culture. I think that was my favorite part of the night because it showed how dire the problem was and it showed a way that the problem could possibly be solved.
MK: What would your vagina say and wear?
JO: What my vagina would wear…one of those big white, fluffy terrycloth robes, definitely.
Marisa Tomei
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls today?
MT: I hope that… (Stumbling for the words) there are just so many levels, I WISH I HAD V-DAY WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER. I mean I just feel like when I saw you girls up there, there’s just such a beauty and purity and brains and power in seeing you in your pure spirit…now is the time when you are going to enter the “real world” and that’s a time when a lot of things can try to crush you and crush that spirit. The strength that you get from a night like tonight and the knowledge that there are people you can go and talk to you, that there’s a community that will stand by you, that you have a right to be your beautiful, female self can change everything. And can change the decisions that you make so you never have to feel ashamed about yourself.
MK: How do you think teenage girls can help stop the violence?
MT: Well, I think that it’s so much in your hands because you are the next generation. You have time to grow up, no need to feel overally overwhelmed but that as you grow and you let that truth stay in your heart of being who you are without shame, that that’s the thing that grows and changes the world and you have that inside you.
MK: What was your favorite part of the show tonight?
MT: You guys
MK: No really
MT: No, really. Totally. That’s what I’ve been saying to everyone, I’m not just saying it because you’re asking me. Completely to me, that was the most moving, most profound, most beautiful part of the evening.
MK: For the record, what would your vagina say?
MT: (Ha ha) Well, I have bee know to say that if my vagina could talk, it would say “ Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.”
Kathy Najimy
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls?
KN: I think teenage girls have affected V-Day. I mean one of the most moving moments of tonight was when there were 20 or 30 teenage girls who stormed the stage…were you in it? Unbelievable, that was my favorite part. All I did was sob because, first of all, you looked fabulous, you danced great and sang great, but most of all, the love between the women. There’s this myth that women don’t get along. Women love each other more than you can imagine. In fact, backstage at V-Day were some of the most famous women on earth, loving each other, supporting each other, laughing and crying with each other, but I think that moment was so moving because I have a 4 year old daughter and I thought if she can grow up with that much confidence and self love and love of other women, I will be a happy, happy mother. I want her to be a part of whatever group that was, my 4 year old daughter is going to audition in 10 years.
MK: How do you think teenage girls can help stop the violence?
KN: Well, this is what I feel: first of all, there is so much emphasis from the media for girls to hate their bodies and if you hate your body, you don’t have any self-esteem. When you have self-esteem, you have the strength and the power to stop things that are going to harm you. I think once women come into their bodies, they will come into their consciousness. And that consciousness altogether is going to make an impact to stop violence against women. I think we really have to be serious and identify how especially girls are being molded into an impossible figure that is killing them and making them sick and making them hate themselves. So I think we really need to pay attention to that. That’s like the number 1… I can’t tell my daughter more times a day how beautiful and perfect she is just the way she is and how god gave her her body and it’s perfect. And we tend to categorize it in another category than violence against women, I think it’s intertwined. I think when you don’t have self-esteem and self-love, then you don’t have the power to stop things that harm you.
Glenn Close
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls today?
GC: Oh gosh, I hope it should have a huge impact on them, to know that there’s a huge support group out there, you know, to help them know they don’t have to be anything they don’t want to be or look a way they don’t want to look, that they can somehow realize how special they are.
MK: How do you think teenage girls can help stop the violence?
GC: I think a lot of teenagers are outraged about the violence and I think they would be wanting very to be a part of something that makes people aware of it.
MK: What was your favorite part of the show?
GC: The girl in the burqa. Unbelievable. To realize that women have to exist in those things. You know I’m claustrophobic, I’d probably die.
MK: What would your vagina wear?
GC: Something as light as possible.
Teri Hatcher
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls today?
TH: Well I hope it will make them feel empowered to do and reach for what they want and also protected and cared for in some way by women who are older and passionate and care about solving the problem of violence against women.
MK: How do you think teenage girls can help stop the violence?
TH: Well, I think they can continue with the attitude that was pervasive at the even tonight, but you know, stopping violence is about stopping the mentality of the violator, it’s sort of like what was so beautiful about that monologue my short skirt which was, it isn’t about the violated, you know not wearing a short skirt or whatever. It’s about the mentality of the violator, and so just continuing this is not ok, I will not accept this, I count, I have worth, I have value, I know what I deserve and this is what I deserve and it’s not that. I think that’s it.
Gloria Steinem
MK: How do you think V-Day will affect teenage girls?
GS: I hope that if they know about V-Day and read about V-Day, they will feel a little more proud of their bodies and a little bit more understanding that they have a right to be safe.
MK: How do you think teenage girls can help stop the violence?
GS: First of all by standing up for themselves. There’s an awful lot of dating violence that is the beginning of more to come and some of it is because the girls don’t feel they’ll be popular if they complain or if they bring any kind of action or discipline against the guy, but we can’t respect people who don‘t respect us and I hope that this might cause girls to talk to each other and discover they’re not alone and they’re not the only ones experiencing it.
Molly Kawachi, who is going into her senior year in high school, was a cast member of “What Girls Know” and performed in Madison Square Garden at V-Day
2001. She has been a trendspotter for Teen People Magazine for the past four years and interviewed celebrities right after the show specifically about teenagers and how they can get involved in the movement to end violence against women and girls.
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The V-Day website has been chosen as the February site of the month by WIN Magazine (Women’s International Net).
WIN is an international online magazine for women.
Here’s what they say:
For the month of February, WIN wishes to congratulate the visionaries who have created V-Day and posted an attractive and informative site online to accompany it. V-Day is a “global movement to end violence against girls and women”. The V stands for the Violence it opposes, and for Valentine’s Day, February 14, upon which it takes place, choosing to commemorate the violence perpetrated worldwide against women on a day traditionally remembered for romantic love.
The “V” also stands for vagina, and the whole idea of V-Day was born from an Obie-award winning play by Eve Ensler entitled The Vagina Monologues. In research for this play, Ensler interviewed women from around the world about a taboo subject – the vagina – and from these encounters, she created a series of monologues revealing intimate looks into women’s thoughts and feelings about this part of their body.
In her research and subsequent touring internationally with the play, Ensler heard hundreds of stories of violence, rape and incest, and saw that there was a need for a large-scale movement to draw attention to this issue. Joined by other women, they created V-Day, and on February 10, 2001, the Saturday before V-Day, an enormous event will take place in New York City to promote awareness for their mission.
The website for V-Day gives all of the information one needs to attend the V-Day performances, which will include appearances by over 70 well-known actresses and celebrities, and will honor the winner of this year’s “End of Rape” contest, selecting the most ingenious plan to stop rape in the world. You can read more about past V-Day events, their vision and mission into the future, how you can become involved or support the movement, and how they provide grant money to a number of grassroots organizations that provide direct assistance to women in need.
To visit WIN online, please click
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By Amy Reiter
Calista Flockhart, Brooke Shields and Claire Danes discuss vagina fashion!
To promote a star-studded rally to combat violence against women to be held at New York’s Madison Square Garden in February, event sponsor Marie Claire magazine asked various celebrities to answer the following questions, raised in Eve Ensler’s play “The Vagina Monologues.”
If your vagina were to wear clothes, what would it wear? And what would it say?
Claire Danes speculates that her nether regions would cloak themselves in “a vintage red silk cape” and holler “Hooray for this!” Brooke Shields’ vagina “would have an eclectic wardrobe. One thing would not be enough. It would have fine materials — cashmere and Pucci,” she says. Properly turned out, it would proudly proclaim, “I belong.” (Well, you’d think.)
Julianna Margulies says her privates would play it cool in “a pair of faded Levi’s and a white T-shirt,” while Calista Flockhart’s would come clad in “silk pajamas with a see-through top” and bark “What are you looking at?” for all to hear.
Perhaps that’s why she adopted a child.
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FLASH! The latest entertainment news and more . . .
By Patrick Pacheco
Glenn Close admitted she was skittish when first asked to participate in “The Vagina Monologues,” Eve Ensler’s graphic drama about female sexuality. She felt she might have to consult her mother first.
“But I knew I’d be a coward if I didn’t do it,” said the actress, flanked on the stage of Manhattan’s Westside Theatre by Ensler, Julianna Margulies and Rosie Perez at a press conference yesterday announcing the third annual V-Day fund raiser at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 10.
They will be among the more than 70 women, including Jane Fonda, Oprah Winfrey, Winona Ryder, Lily Tomlin and Brooke Shields, who will read excerpts-some humorous, some tragic -from “Monologues” as part of a benefit to help combat global violence against women. The event will mark the return to the stage of Fonda, who is honorary chair and who has donated $1million to what Ensler described as “a movement, not a charity.” Ensler expressed the hope that this year’s V-Day at the 18,000-seat Garden will “be the biggest event ever” in the history of the anti-violence movement.
“There are too many women being desecrated,” she said, adding that Winfrey would be performing a new monologue. Ensler wrote it following a trip to Afghanistan, where women were being persecuted and, she said, “killed in droves” by the Islamic fundamentalist regime.
Following the press conference, Close expressed hope that the V-Day event would draw men as well as women. “It’s not about feminism,” she said. “It’s about humanism.”
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by Mitchell Fink
Jane Fonda’s decade-long hiatus from acting is about to end.
Fonda’s name has been appearing in ads among a star-studded list of women, including Oprah Winfrey, Calista Flockhart, Winona Ryder, Glenn Close and Ali MacGraw, who will gather at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 10 for a rally demanding an end to violence against women.
The highlight of the event, dubbed “V-Day,” will be a gala benefit performance of Eve Ensler’s wildly successful Off-Broadway play “The Vagina Monologues.”
Much has appeared in the press about Winfrey’s participation, but what people don’t know is that Fonda has both underwritten the MSG event to the tune of $1 million and agreed to perform the show’s final scene, a birthing monologue titled, “I Was There in the Room.”
See www.nydailynews.com for more.
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By Liz Smith
HERE is a “Vagina Monologues” exclusive. On Feb. 10 at Madison Square Garden, Oprah Winfrey and Calista Flockhart will perform two new monologue’s written by Eve Ensler. Oprah’s piece will deal with the horrific conditions women live under in Afghanistan. Calista’s monolgue deals with young girls taking charge of their own bodies – a piece in fact written for Calista. This special reading will be the centerpiece of “V-Day 2001,” a fund-raiser to fight violence against women. Others participating that night include Jane Fonda, Marlo Thomas, Winona Ryder, Ali MacGraw, Claire Danes, Gina Gershon, Rosie Perez, Glenn Close, Kathy Najimy, Swoosie Kurtz.
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By Sharon M Tan
Three barefoot women in black, perched on bar stools and having multiple orgasms – that’s what The Vagina Monologues at Jubilee Hall promised and delivered.
This highly acclaimed, groundbreaking play by Eve Ensler won an Obie Award in 1997. It has since been performed in more than 35 countries around the world and has been translated into some 25 languages.
The New Voice Company from the Philippines was granted the license to stage the play in Asia. The Vagina Monologues had sell-out runs in the Philippines and in Hongkong before it came here to Singapore.
Don’t expect fancy staging, lavish costumes or props. And even though the actresses giving the monologues are accomplished performers, they are not what you should remember about the play.
The original Filipino cast of Monique Wilson, Dulce Aristorenas and Tami Monsod, excellent as they are, are merely messengers. The star of the evening was The Vagina Monologues – the play.
Provocative, uninhibited, frank and funny. The individual stories of various women – from a 72-year-old woman who’s never discovered her clitoris to a Kosovo woman who’s been brutally raped by soliders to a dominatrix who demonstrates several sexual moans – come alive through the monologues.
Whether you want it or not, you are pulled into a world of women’s experiences, a world that’s sometimes fraught with pain, indignities, subjugation and hurt. Whether you want it or not, you are told what a vagina is and what it feels like to have one.
Eve Ensler, the playwright, is a passionate activist in the fight against violence towards women. She is an advocate for V-Day, a movement that helps fund women’s organisations, which works to stop violence against women.
Her play, The Vagina Monologues, has always been the centrepiece at V-Day gatherings and a platform for women to speak up for their rights.
“I think a play like this liberates people to explore what it is they feel and to have the courage to speak up about it, especially women who are subject to abuse and violations,” explains Monique Wilson, artistic director and actress with The New Voice Company.
“In most societies, we just keep quiet about those things that are attached to being shameful, whereas in a play like this we feel the strength to talk about things that should not be done. And I think it liberates women a lot because they feel that they have a right to voice out.”
In keeping with the ideals of the playwright, proceeds from the show go towards the support of The Purple Rose Campaign, which seeks to end sex trafficking of Filipino women and children.
The Vagina Monologues may seem outrageous and vulgar to the more conservative in the audience, but that would mean that they missed the point. “You need to get into the text, otherwise it would just be a vulgar, funny play,” says Dulce Aristorenas, one of the three women performing the monologues.
“That’s not what it’s all about. As actresses, we give voice to millions of women out there who have to be silent about their situations and all the issues affecting them. So we have a huge responsibility on our part to open people’s minds to the text.”
“It’s difficult to get through the initial barrier of people thinking it’s just another titillating, pornographic piece,” adds Wilson. “So we really have to be advocates and activists, almost.”
This award-winning play is a must-see. If you only have to watch one production this year, make it The Vagina Monologues.
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By Sakinah Manaff
‘Down there’. ‘Pussy’. ‘Vagina’. Nothing raises eyebrows and makes people squirm more than straight talk about women’s genitals. But in Asia, one woman is making other women sit up and take notice of theirs.
Monique Wilson wants to allow Asian women to explore their sexuality – without guilt, repercussions and embarrassment. The founder and artistic director of The New Voice Company (NVC) from the Philippines, has brought the award-winning off-Broadway performance, The Vagina Monologues, to Singapore. Having premiered in Asia last September in Manila, the production has traveled to Hong Kong, where it was well-received.
“People think the mention of ‘vagina’ is dirty or taboo,” says the 30-year-old Wilson.
She goes on to explain why the V-word provokes a strong response. “Female sexuality scares people,” she says. “Because a woman who’s in touch with herself and her sexuality is very powerful. And the vagina is a fundamental part of women’s sexuality.”
“But the play is not risqué, titillating, or pornographic. We need to make this clear,” she insists. “A lot of women will want to see this because it is life-affirming.”
Despite its title, The Vagina Monologues is actually a collective and unique testimony of womanhood in all its potency, hilarity, and heartbreak. It was the lack of women’s awareness about their private parts that prompted Eve Ensler, an author, playwright, poet and activist, to break silence on the taboo subject.
At the risk of being called lewd, Ensler interviewed hundreds of women from all ages, occupations, races and classes – from the old, the young, the married, singles, lesbians, corporate professionals to sex workers, African American, Asian, Caucasian and Jewish.
At first understandably reluctant to talk, these women slowly opened up and soon, the intimate confessions came forth like a dam bursting. In talking about their private parts, women also bared a range of experiences dealing with sex and sexual abuse, lesbian encounters, indignities of pelvic exams, women’s dreams, orgasms, marriage, rape, etc.
The result is ‘The Vagina Monologues’ — originally written as a book, but changed later into a three-woman, 90-minute theatrical piece. The play soon became a runaway hit, winning an Obie Award in 1997 and nominations for the Drama Desk and Helen Hayes awards.
Wilson found herself drawn to the material from the start. “It’s a powerful show, which opens up a lot of emotions,” she says in a recent phone interview from Manila. “It provokes us to ask questions about things that we thought we understood on some kind of level but apparently didn’t. As a woman, it allowed a deeper understanding of myself.”
She hopes that the play would impact positively with other Asian women as it has done in her life. “I want Asian women to find their voices,” she says. “In a society such as ours with its cultural problems, patriarchal structures and machismo, women have more to fight for and more to prove. I hope that the play would allow women their desire — whether it’s sexual, emotional or mental.”
Productions abroad have donated a portion of ticket sales to the V-Day Fund — a fund to help combat violence against women. In Singapore, the production will support the Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers, led by Gabriela — the National Association of Filipino Women.
Still, there had been problems trying to get funding when the NVC first discussed about bringing the show to Manila. “Sponsors did not want to go near it,” Wilson laughs. “They were shocked with the word and [people] reacted strongly against it, although they liked the play.”
Clearly, the subjects of Ensler’s interviews took a lot of courage to disclose a lot of the deep seated pain and animosity they had tried to bury for years.
Take hair for example. A woman shaves her pubic hair, giving in to her husband’s ultimatum: ‘Do it, or I sleep around.’ He never lived to his part of the bargain. Her exposed private parts made her feel so vulnerable. ‘You can’t love vagina without loving hair. The hair is there to protect,’ was her unhappy realization.
In another scenario, a 72-year-old woman tells how she became frigid. Once, while making out a long time ago in college, her lover felt her wet symptoms at arousal. He made fun of her, likening her smell to a fish. She never got married, never got turned on, and never went down there again. Talking about it caused her so much pain but it also liberated her.
If Wilson looks familiar, it’s because you may have seen her in the lead role of Miss Saigon. It’s been ten years since her debut in the West End musical, which catapulted her and many Filipino performers to international success.
However, she’d find a lot of problems in playing the Kim character again. “We celebrated the negative stereotypes of being an Asian woman,” she admits. “It’s so Hollywood to play an Asian prostitute who falls in love with a GI man. Asian women have had that Kim interpretation for years.”
Wilson had struggled with the interpretation as early as her second year in the West End production. “As a person, I was growing up, becoming more aware of myself as a Filipina and as a woman. I am an Asian woman, even if my exposure is Western. I would not have done what Kim did.”
Though acknowledging that the story is “about an Asian whore, you can certainly give her some redeeming values that will flesh her out a bit more. We need to watch things that will flesh us out as diverse human beings who are faced with choices.”
Wilson has been in the business for 21 years – long enough that she was able to hold a one-woman concert last year in the Philippines. She played Peron’s mistress in Evita when she was 14 – a role Madonna did at 40. By 24, she had realized a life-long dream – to start her own theater company.
“I never took stage work seriously – in the sense that I could change the world or make a difference – until I was in university,” she reveals. “It was in university that I realized that the stage was not just for entertainment and fluff, but also for making a statement. It was for standing up for something you believed in.”
“The Vagina Monologues” will be playing between 12th and 17th January 2001 at Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel. Tickets are available at all SISTIC outlets.
Note: The play is restricted to mature audiences 21 years of age and above.
To view this article at New Asia Woman, please click here.
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By Alan Hustak
Montrealers will have to wait at least 11 months to see the wildly successful “Vagina Monologues” on home turf.
Eve Ensler’s theatrical hit features women reading a dozen short first-person accounts about that intimate body part. The show was first staged in New York, where it won an Obie Award in 1997. Since then, it has been performed around the world, in theatres from Athens to Zagreb, with scores of celebrities doing the reading.
The show ended its sold-out Toronto run on Sunday – but the production has gone south, not east.
It opened Monday in Atlanta, Ga., as part of a tour that will see it zigzag across the U.S., with stops in Vancouver in March and Winnipeg in April.
“The first available date for Montreal is a two-week window in November,” said Steven Shinn, vice-president (program operations) at Unique Lives, the production company that sponsored the Toronto production.
Joanna Spencer, associate director for the Vagina Monologues touring company, said few producers appreciated how successful the production would be. “Until it opened in Toronto, no one in Montreal was interested in picking up the show,” she said.
“It jumps all over the place, but the nature of the piece, it can travel easily. It is not in a truck, so it doesn’t have to follow a circuit.”
Spencer said the show will probably play Montreal at the end of the year or early next year: “We are shuffling dates around until things are confirmed in writing.”
Playwright Ensler, 47, based the show on interviews with more than 200 women. Using both drama and humour, it has been a hit with audiences. For example, one monologue answers the question: “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?”
Women of all ages have read in the show, and the production has drawn a good number of celebrities.
The Toronto show featured two regular actors, Starla Benford and Sherri Parker Lee, joined by such Canadian stars as Sonja Smits, Gloria Reuben, Shirley Douglas, musician Chantal Kreviazuk and Mary Walsh, of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Recent auditions in Toronto for the rest of the Canadian tour attracted hundreds of women.
Some of the past cast members of shows in the U.S. include: Brett Butler, Nell Carter, Claire Danes, Calista Flockhart, Teri Garr, Robin Givens, Donna Hanover, Melissa Joan Hart, Teri Hatcher, Amy Irving, Erica Jong, Carol Kane, Swoosie Kurtz, Ricki Lake, Julianna Margulies, Andrea Martin, Rue McClanahan, Mary McDonnell, Rita Moreno, Alanis Morissette, Rosie Perez, Phylicia Rashad, Gloria Reuben, Mercedes Ruehl, Annabella Sciorra, Brooke Shields, Julia Stiles, Marlo Thomas and Marisa Tomei.
For more information on “The Vagina Monologues,” visit the website.