V-Day Blog Archive

Women.com Interview with Eve Ensler

“The Vagina Monologues” creator opens up

by Julia Bourland

She talks texture. She talks ticklers. She talks about what vaginas would say if they could talk.
And in the process, Eve Ensler is changing the way we think about vaginas.

Ensler, a world-renowned playwright, performer and activist, interviewed 200 women before penning her award-winning show “The Vagina Monologues,” a compilation of a dozen or so first-person accounts. What premiered in 1996 as a one-woman dynamo starring Ensler has mushroomed into a cultural phenomenon; the show is running simultaneously in cities around the country with A-list actresses sharing the billing. A performance by Ensler is set to air on HBO in spring 2001.

Offstage, Ensler is advocating another cause: ending violence towards women. In 1998, she founded V-Day, a consciousness-raising event and fundraiser designed to stop abuse against women. V-Day 2001 will kick off in Manhattan on Feb. 10, 2001, at Madison Square Garden, with a performance of “The Vagina Monologues” starring Glenn Close, Calista Flockhart, Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep.

Women.com recently caught up with Ensler to discuss, well, what else does one discuss with Ensler but…

For the complete interview, please visit Women.com.

San Francisco Gate: The “Monologues’ Dialogue

Read about The Monologues’ Dialogue in the San Francisco Gate.

Los Angeles Times Theater Review

Los Angeles Times
Theater Review

By F. KATHLEEN FOLEY, Special To The Times

From left, Julianna Margulies, Julie Kavner and Rosie Perez are off-Broadway veterans of “Monologues.”
WALLY SKALIJ / Los Angeles Times Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” at the Canon Theatre, is not just a play anymore. It’s a social movement. The Obie Award-winning show has toured widely since it burst onto the New York theater scene in 1996. In its Canon run, “Monologues” features the high-voltage team of Julie Kavner, Julianna Margulies and Rosie Perez, all of whom have performed as part of the piece’s continually rotating celebrity cast off-Broadway.

In 1998, “Monologues” inspired Ensler and other organizers to proclaim “V-Day”–specifically set aside to focus on the issue of violence against women. Observed every Valentine’s Day, V-Day has become both an effective fund-raising tool and a feminist flash point. During the past three years, the forces behind V-Day have raised more than $3 million for anti-violence organizations.

In today’s explicit media, saturated with hyper-violent images and viciously misogynistic references that would have been unthinkable even five years ago, it’s hard to argue with such a noble and necessary cause.
It’s also hard to review a social movement. To separate the play from the sweeping sociopolitical context surrounding it is a daunting task. Impossible, in fact. But that is largely the point. As dramatic literature, “Monologues” is roughhewn, ranging from the soaringly poetic to the uncomfortably pornographic. As a neo-feminist celebration, however, it is an occasion for rejoicing.

A survivor of incest and constant physical abuse in her childhood, Ensler based her piece on more than 200 interviews with women from many walks of life. The women were asked to discuss their vaginas in specific and exhaustive detail. Some monologues are amalgams of several interviews based on the same subject; others are undiluted reminiscences from a single woman about a past sexual triumph–or trauma.

The surprisingly candid result is often hilarious, sometimes harrowing. And, let’s face it, blatantly monomaniacal. At a few particularly graphic intervals, Ensler crosses the line into moaning, panting salaciousness–that same reductive view of female sexuality her show decries.

It’s an unsettling sensation but, one suspects, a conscious breach on Ensler’s part, a relentless objectification of the female anatomy meant to make a point about society’s relentless objectification of the female anatomy. In fact, the feelings “Monologues’ engender are as complicated as the subject of female sexuality itself. At times, one feels like yelling, “Enough, already!” But sometimes one suppresses the inclination to leap up and shout, archaically, “Right on, feminist sister!”

Originally a one-woman show starring Ensler, “Monologues” has become a favorite forum for female celebrities to display their stage skills and honor their feminist leanings.

Under the direction of stage veteran Joe Mantello, another Obie winner, the present Los Angeles cast burns up the boards. “Monologues” veterans Margulies, Perez and Kavner know their stuff. But “Monologues” is essentially readers’ theater, a glorified recital during which the actresses remain seated, scripts in hand. And, on opening night, the performers had a few moments of eye-darting jitters as they referred to their texts.

More often, however, the action is seamless, and the actresses shine. Comically twitchy Perez elicits roars as she recounts one woman’s journey toward self-acceptance. Detailing an elderly woman’s early sexual humiliation, the husky-voiced Kavner moves the audience to tears. And the elegant Margulies ventures intrepidly into the outrageous, in the most definitive portrayal of the female orgasm since “Harry Met Sally.” The cast changes every few weeks, so catch this winning combination if you can.

Daily Mail “The Ladies in Red”

For one night only, stars take a boa for charity.

by Neil Sears and Julia Timms

They can normally expect star billing, huge fees and dressing rooms to match. Last night, all a host of leading ladies asked in return for waiving their hefty pay cheques was to share the same stage – in bright red feather boas.

There were Hollywood stars Gillian Anderson and Melanie Griffith, Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett – the Oscar nominated star of Elizabeth. Also among a parade of television and film stars were presenters Katie Puckrik and Dani Behr, actress Natasha McElhone and model Sophie Dahl.

They were taking part in a special performance of a work by Eve Ensler to raise money for women’s charities.
And most took the stage at London’s Old Vic swathed in a red boa to celebrate the fact that it was Valentine’s Day.
However, as they met for the first time yesterday afternoon – with just a few hours to rehearse before appearing in front of guests paying up to 500 pound – tensions were almost certainly running high before curtain up. Melanie Griffith, for one, admitted in feeling incredibly nervous.

She said: “I have never performed on stage before so of course I am scared.” Sophie Dahl also had reason for feeling on edge – she was accosted by a drunk outside the theatre. As the model made her way to the stage door, a tramp shouted: “I have seen you before.” An onlooker said: “He then lunged for her. She looked very shocked and screamed, but was not hurt because her PR agent pulled her away. She was through the stage door very quickly after that.

The controversial drama – called “The Vagina Monologues,” – is based on the responses of 200 women who were asked intimate questions about their bodies. Titanic star Kate Winslet had one of the toughest roles in the often-touching show. Her reading was about a teenage girl in Bosnia who had been gang raped.

Ally McBeal star Calista Flockart had been expected to take part in the reading but was unavailable to attend. A theatre spokesman said Miss Flockart who has recently sparked concerns that she is anorexic, was busy preparing for a new show.

There were almost as many stars in the audience as on stage. Among them were Vanessa Redgrave and her mother Lucy Redgrave, Jennifer Ehle, who starred in Pride and Prejudice. Kylie Minoque and pop star Natalie Imbruglia.

Anyone wishing to see the show in future, however, will be denied the sight of so many famous faces. New York writer Ms. Ensler will be performing the monologues in a one- woman show at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington until March 8.

The New York Times

The Vagina Monologues’ started 30 minutes late. At 7 on Saturday night, when the curtain should have been going up at the Hammerstein Ballroom, the sidewalk outside was still packed with audience members trying to get in. The crowd was, despite the best efforts of the police officers on duty, spilling onto and into the middle of West 34th Street.

…The show was, someone had told me, the hottest ticket in town.

Could be. There was some serious star power inside, including Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Lily Tomlin, Winona Ryder and Calista Flockhart, who plays everybody’s favorite heart-on-her-sleeve television lawyer, Ally McBeal. What I couldn’t figure out was how Eve Ensler, a low-profile playwright and poet, had talked all this Hollywood feminist glamour into being in her show. Yes, it was a benefit for groups that are trying to end violence against women, but the world is full of good causes, and there’s a benefit every night.

…When the program finally began, around 7:30, all became clear. Nobody had told me that Ms. Ensler had the timing of an expert stand-up comic.

…Remember the accusations 25 years ago or so that the women’s movement had no sense of humor? That was then. Ms. Goldberg, resplendent in a wine-red robe trimmed in gold, could not possibly have ever been funnier than she was in the material she did to close Act I. Advocating bidets, Charmin bathroom tissue, fuzzy stirrups for gynecological exams and a number of more graphic pleasures, Ms. Goldberg caught fire and took the audience with her.

…Ms. Close had her own moment of true comic glory. Looking dignified and strong, putting on her eyeglasses, she began her reading, which was a paean to a particular four-letter word used to describe female genitalia. By the end, she was screaming the word, stomping her feet and raising a power-to-the-people fist in the air. The word had been reclaimed by women!

…The second act had some wonderfully outrageous humor, including Ms. Close’s aforementioned monologue and Hazelle Goodman’s energetic account of an adolescent girl’s first lesbian experience, but overall the tone was far more serious than in Act I.

I’m tempted to criticize the show for turning so earnest at this point…But there were heart-rending stories to be told.

…[W]hen Soraya Mire began a reading about the genital mutilation of young girls in Somalia, it was the first time during the evening that the woman at the microphone was telling her own story…The theatre fell into total silence while she spoke. Gloria Steinem, who was on stage with Ms. Mire, embraced her at the end.

Newsday

“[V-Day is] taking Valentine’s Day, which has been a real exploitation of romance, and making it into a symbol of equal power. That’s important,” [Gloria] Steinem said.

…She is childless and, and some say, more stunning now than in her youth when the public began bestowing upon her a level of celebrity that she still abhors.

“I recognize that the term celebrity has a use,” she said. “But it has no meaning, no content. I would rather just be a feminist.”

Gannett Newspapers

Behind a Scarsdale façade of wealth and suburban respectability, [Eve] Ensler endured a traumatic childhood. The daughter of a corporate president, she says she was raped by her father from the age of 10, when the sex turned to brutal beatings.

…That early life in Scarsdale paved the way for ‘V-Day…”The V stands for Vagina, Victory, Valentine’s Day or anti-Violence,” says Ensler. “Take your pick. What we’re saying is this: If, by the year 2005, rape, incest, battery and genital mutilation hasn’t ended, we’re going to call a global strike of women to stop it. That’s our agenda.”

…Ensler has worked for a year with two producers and a committee of 40 women to put together the V-Day performance… “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “We started with nothing. Not one corporation would give us a penny, because of the word vagina.”

George

[Eve] Ensler is the idea woman behind V-Day 1998, a campaign to end violence against women, which features a benefit performance of her award-winning play ‘The Vagina Monologues’ at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan. Ensler has asked hundreds of women about their privates – something not all were ready to discuss. “What are we saying about our bodies if we can’t say ‘vagina’?” she asks.

…Not an easy thing to do, especially in public. Even an esteemed agitator like Gloria Steinem admits to discomfort with uttering the word. “I came of age in the 1950s,” says Steinem, who wrote the foreword to the book version of the play (published this month by Villard). “Words like ‘vagina’ and ‘menstruation’ were embarrassing, and a word like ‘clitoris’ was said by Freud to be childlike. So you can see what kind of deep shit we were in.” Nonetheless, Steinem is reading portions of the drama on February 14, along with Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Margaret Cho, and Lily Tomlin.

The play, which includes a piece on rape in Bosnia, a list of things a vagina might wear, and a monologue by an old woman who hasn’t looked at her own ‘down there’ for decades, is less graphic than poignant. “The piece has never been titillating,” says Ensler. “There’s an orgasm at the end, but even that is more about power. The larger statement here is about women and the world holding sacred what lives between our legs, that place of our birth.”

So to be fair, should we also have a P-Day for men? “Every day is Penis Day,” notes Ensler. “It would be redundant.”

The Daily News

Some of Hollywood’s brightest stars lent their talents to a Valentine’s Day performance of an Obie Award-winning play [The Vagina Monologues] focusing on female anatomy.

…In her section, [Whoopi] Goldberg asserted that the paper gowns women are forced to don at the gynecologist’s office should be ‘purple velvet’ instead.

…[Susan] Sarandon wept as she performed “I Was There in the Room,” a piece [Eve] Ensler wrote about being present when her daughter-in-law gave birth.

And Soraya Mire, an Ethiopian woman who was a victim of genital mutilation, moved many to tears as she described the torture she endured at the hands of her mother.

The star-studded audience at Saturday’s show in the Manhattan Center’s Hammerstein Ballroom gave the performance a standing ovation.

Girl Talk

“I was taught that my vagina was something private to the point of embarrassment,” the comedienne Kathy Najimy said, explaining her involvement in V-Day. “And then I started in the women’s movement, and I realized that if you have sex, you have power.” She added, “Now I would like my middle name to be ‘Vagina.'”

Rebecca Mead, The Talk of the Town, “Girl Talk,” The New Yorker, January 26, 1998, p. 29