Vagina Monologues: Women Speak the Truth Inside
It is the Play that Reveals Women’s Issues with the Kick of Fun
Jun 25, 2009
Had writer Eve Ensler named it Woman's Monologues, perhaps it would not be that popular now. The name vagina is itself a statement. Since Ensler put up the original production of The Vagina Monologues in New York in 1996, the vagina has come a long way. But behold, it is the women talking of their lives.
The Woman's Statement
The moaning vagina sent the audience roaring with laughter at the Robert Moss Theatre in Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan. But at the end of the matinee, everyone realized they ought to respect the vagina more. Women's organizations all the over the world present their version of The Vagina Monologues, usually in the month of March, when International Women's Day is celebrated.
Recently, at the quaint space known as the Robert Moss Theatre, a community organization in Queens called Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FIRE) staged the play with a multiracial cast of 18 women. Ria Mae Baoro directed the play, which packed the theatre.
For Cindy Sering, who did the monologue for the "search for your vagina workshop", the experience was simply fantastic. "It totally was a learning experience. When you act for The Vagina Monologues, you actually speak to yourself too. There are issues that we women just sweep under the rug. Now more and more women are voicing out, and are in touch with themselves."
The Play With a Kick
The name of the play itself is a kick. It makes you a bit uncomfortable in the beginning. But once you are seated and begin to listen to the women, you get a better understanding of the issues women face.
So what are the women's issues? The vaginas mumbled, complained, described, moaned, cried, and agonized by their concerns on wife battery, infidelity, rape, cancer, unfulfilled desires, suppressed desires, commercial exploitation, the trauma of war, the glory of sex, and yes, the pangs of giving birth.
The birthing vagina spoke how the vagina is for everyone. "Come to think of it," she uttered. "The vagina is for you. Its 8,000 soft muscles, the softest in the body in fact, guarantee pure pleasure as one enters into it and it can stretch itself so wide to give birth to a new life. So... respect the vagina."
The vaginas bring the issues all up to the surface and so everybody gets to talk about it and a few (but growing in numbers) are doing something to end and resolve these issues. With these realities on poverty and inequality becoming more pronounced globally, Vagina Monologues will continue to be an important voice in the women's movement.
Almost half of the audience at the Lafayette theatre was male, and they too were sympathetic with the angst of the vagina. "The play was an awakener, that I should be more sensitive to women. It made me laugh till I cried. Congratulations!" says Pete Clark, an immigrant from Kosovo who watched the show with his girlfriend.
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