The creator of “The Vagina Monologues,” Eve Ensler, spoke yesterday about the origins of her play and how the power of theater can affect people and their attitudes.
“I’ve had two shows here so far and Boston is extremely vagina friendly,” Ensler said.
“The ‘Vagina Monologues’ have been an incredible gift. … It’s been hard as a political playwright, but somehow it has caught commercial success. One of the reasons is I based ‘Vagina Monologues’ on interviews. … I put those stories out there and people found themselves.”
One of the first women she talked to said her mother called it a “pussycat.”
She said she rarely used large blocks of dialogue from the interviews. Often she would use one line or one movement to characterize the woman.
For example, in Beverly Hills, women had operations on their vaginas, such as trimming it.
One woman told her, “Before the operation, Harvey could never get hard.”
That was all she needed for that particular person, Ensler said.
“Doing this operation didn’t destroy her life. … she was thrilled.”
While she was doing another play off-Broadway, the producer said to try out “The Vagina Monologues” for three days, and a reviewer came to the show.
“[The reviewer] wrote this big review and it encouraged me to pursue it seriously,” Ensler said. “I started performing it and people came. Something happened. … It was political.”
Ensler recounted how surprised she was, as a feminist, at the number of women who don’t look at their vaginas because it showed that “people haven’t come along.”
“I performed in these small venues, such as Oklahoma City, and the newspapers refused to announce it because all of them were Christian,” she said.
As she began to perform more of the monologues, she realized that woman needed to tell her how they have been battered.
In Bulgaria, activists came together from Macedonia and Albania, “stood up and said vagina in their native tongues,” Ensler said. One woman took 15 minutes to say vagina in her native tongue. “Finally, she said ‘nimja’ — it was like the liberation cry of the Balkans.”
Vagina Monologues has played in several countries where it’s translated and changed to suit a particular culture.
“I was in Bulgaria, where ‘Vagina Monologues’ has been running for months. Every country has made it its own. In Rio, it’s romantic. In Paris, it’s sexy. Everyone has their own brilliant interpretation,” she said.
According to Ensler, it was hard to get “The Vagina Monologues” in Bulgaria, but because it was allowed, it was used as a focal point in political movements.
“It is shocking what is happening to women in this world. … In Africa, over 2 million women are having their clitorises destroyed. … The desecration of women is the desecration of us all,” Ensler said. “We have to stop the patterns of violence.
“Part of our work as artists and activists is to stop judging people … it doesn’t matter if they’re left or right, they’ve been destroyed. That is the advantage of art … you don’t cling to polarizing ideas.”
At times, doing the performance can be nerve-wrecking.
“When I first started performing this piece, I felt terrified. At times I still do. I did a performance for a corporate audience. I was doing orgasms and not a laugh. … I had a profound revelation: you’re not doing this for their approval. … You just keep going and trust the vagina spirits to protect you,” Ensler said.
By next year, Ensler hopes to bring V-Day to more cities, stimulate “The Vagina Monologues” all over the country and start a youth campaign in high schools and junior high schools.
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