Disclaimer: This content may be considered sexually explicit. Not for the faint-of-heart, prude or frigid.
VAGINA! Eve Ensler, through her episodic play featuring monologists such as Oprah, Susan Sarandon and Cyndi Lauper, and a growing number of college students from campuses worldwide, has helped make it empowering and liberating for women to say VAGINA! These monologues, translated and performed in more than 130 countries, share women's stories from sex and birthing to rape and incest.
Eve Ensler, collaborating both The Vagina Monologues and V-Day, a global non-profit movement, helped raised over $75 million for women's anti-violence groups. And the movement is still growing!
Eve Ensler, collaborating both The Vagina Monologues and V-Day, a global non-profit movement, helped raised over $75 million for women's anti-violence groups. And the movement is still growing!
As an audience member the experience is powerful. But as a monologist, the experience is...well..., you can read about it in Erin's words. Enjoy!
Alamo, CA; Crested Butte, CO
Interview:
How did you get involved with the Vagina Monologues?
I have ALWAYS wanted to be an actress. But never put myself out there. I was reading our local paper in Crested Butte and there was a teensy little note about tryouts for the Vagina Monologues. I tore it out and stared at it while I drank a bottle of wine, and then made the call. I told no one, and just went and read and thought to myself, “You have lost your marbles. It’s official”.
What was it about the Vagina Monologues that spoke to you?
Facing fears. Empowerment. I mean, come on, going on the stage for the first time and talking about VAGINAS?!? You can’t have a more powerful immersion into your dream. Very cool.
What did this experience mean to you?
Ahhhhh!!!! It has so many layers. I loved it. The stage, the butterflies, the intensity, the audience. Definitely a little bit of a drug. Another big piece of it was the women I worked with. We all had our personal stories and occasionally after rehearsal we would go out for a drink and the stories just gently exposed themselves and it lent a great deal of depth to some of the monologues that were assigned to us. In that, lifelong friendships were born. I would have people around town that I didn’t know come up to me and tell me how floored they were by my monologue. Strangers would hug me. It was an immensely rewarding experience long after the show was finished.
What makes you smile?
About my vagina? Ha! Get comfortable, this could take a while. All joking aside, I was once given a sweet compliment about my vagina after receiving some lovely cunnilingus. He said “it’s meaty and delicious”. I’m fairly certain that if a man had said that when I was 21 I would have gone in for some ludicrous surgery to make it “non-meaty”. In my 40s it thrills me!
ek rocked it! (i'll work with you if you ever want to do the moaning monologue!)
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tricia
I'd love to hear that!!!
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