The collective voices of women excitedly scream in your face and seductively whisper in your ear. There is solidarity and familiarity in narratives of their experiences that proudly showcase life and oddly comfort audiences. These are The Vagina Monologues.
Written by American playwright, performer, feminist, and activist Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play that The New York Times lauded on its release as “probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade”.
As an episodic play, The Vagina Monologues consists of an array of different stories told by different women as well as subsequent performances by groups of actresses.
At the core of the collective monologues are the various aggregates of the female experience: birth, orgasm, masturbation, love, menstruation, sex, rape, and genital mutilation. No matter how triggering or inherently stigmatized conversations on these topics are for women, Ensler exclaimed ‘screw it’ and wrote about them.
The Vagina Monologues showcases the power of narrative and of being a woman. In the play, the vagina is utilized as an apparatus of empowerment, and in the different stories the audience and the speaker come to understand their own embodiment of individuality.
This kind of rawness and vulnerability alongside vitality and regained self-worth showcases the greatness and realism of how The Vagina Monologues translates aspects of the female experience into aural, visual, poetics and art.
“The Vagina Monologues is a classic feminist play, and it’s a tradition for Voices for Women to put on a performance every year.
The cast is so talented and invested in their monologues that even if you aren’t particularly interested in feminism or the play itself, it’s worth attending just to see the work they’ve put into performing their monologues,” stated Sianna Boschetti ‘18, co-director of the play.
Some of the monologues include “My Angry Vagina,” “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could,” and “Reclaiming Cunt”.
The Rollins production of The Vagina Monologues will, appropriately, include performances from Rollins women of different backgrounds, ideas, majors, and more.
The event, sponsored by the Lucy Cross Center for Women and Their Allies, will take place is the Cornell Fine Arts Museum (CFAM) on Friday, Feb. 19 and Saturday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m.
Be sure to grab yourself a seat and lend an ear to the stories of these women.
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