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[Theater reviews]

Opening night
Eve Ensler on The Vagina Monologues

BY IRIS FANGER

“I really know someplace in my being that the destruction of women is the destruction of the species, and if we don’t turn it around, we are not going to go on,” announces playwright and performer Eve Ensler. When Ensler discovered the sisterhood of the vagina — and dared to speak its name out loud on stage — she unleashed a force that not only changed her life but transformed the lives of countless women across the world. She also tapped into the dangerous agenda of one of civilization’s most persistent rituals: the subjugation by force of women by men.

Ensler premiered the Off Broadway sensation The Vagina Monologues at a small downtown New York venue in 1996. She had based the work on a series of interviews she conducted with a diverse group of women who talked freely about their sexual secrets. In fact, she found an incredible desire in women to make their stories known. “So many people have amazing stories and need to tell them. Women are so invisible and hidden.”

After the first showing, which brought Ensler an Obie, she honed the material in grassroots theaters from Jerusalem to Oklahoma City, Croatia to England, finally landing Off Broadway in October of 1999. The play became a phenomenon and continues to run with a rotating trio of actresses — some of them stars — replacing Ensler’s solo turn. The New York success has spawned additional companies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto, as well as in 20 cities around the world, and a national tour. The Vagina Monologues opens this Tuesday at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre, where Ensler herself is scheduled to perform it.

Although she had studied theater at Middlebury College, this playwright had never been on stage before The Vagina Monologues. “I felt very connected to the women and the stories. I felt they were very sacred and personal and wanted to protect them. I felt that if I could tell their stories, they were somehow safe.”

Safety does not come to mind when reading Ensler’s play. To be sure, there are moments of laughter and poignancy, not to mention an organized search for the perfect orgasm that reads like an aerobics workout. But the narration relates incidents that every woman shares viscerally if not in reality: the rape of a girl child by a family member or friend, the mother’s slap on the face when the menstrual blood appears, the strange sexual fetishes of controlling men, and, most horrendous of all, the use of women as trophies of war in Bosnia. The writing rings true because Ensler knows of what she writes. As a child she was beaten and sexually abused by her father. This led to bouts of alcoholism in high school and college, followed by years of depression. Now 47, she has been a playwright for 20 years.

“I think the more political you get, the more out there, the more defined, I don’t think it makes your career any easier. I don’t get a lot of offers from Hollywood.” But in September Houston’s Alley Theatre will stage her drama about the women of Bosnia, Necessary Targets. And HBO has just filmed her performance of The Vagina Monologues for broadcast next year. Beginning in June, she plans to hole up in New York to work on her next play, The Good Body, which she’s culled from interviews with women in 17 countries about “how they change, fix, mutilate, enhance their bodies in order to fit in with their particular culture.”

But the wider success of The Vagina Monologues is the political activism it has spawned. The first V-Day gathering to end violence against women, at which stars ranging from Glenn Close to Whoopi Goldberg performed Ensler’s script, was held in New York on Valentine’s Day, 1998. The ritual has since spread to cities and college campuses around the world. The 2001 V-Day celebration at New York’s Madison Square Garden sold out its 18,000 seats.

Ensler has chosen to perform The Vagina Monologues herself in Boston, she says, because so many Massachusetts colleges have held V-Day celebrations, Boston University, Harvard, Mount Holyoke, Northeastern, Salem State, Simon’s Rock, Smith, Tufts, Wellesley, and UMass-Boston, -Amherst, and -Dartmouth among them. “The money raised in each locale goes to local people. Then there’s the productions that are raising lots of money. We’ve given away between three and four million.”

When she began this vaginal journey, Ensler had no idea that the taboo words she spoke would turn the stage into an agent of change. “Everything that has happened around The Vagina Monologues has been a mystery. I feel really honored that I’ve gotten to serve. It’s way beyond me. Writing The Vagina Monologues and performing the piece has allowed me to come back into my vagina. I feel I’m fully inhabiting myself in some way that I didn’t before. I feel happy most of the time. I feel much more confident. I feel non-apologetic about my mission, my purpose, my strength, very connected to women all over the planet.”

The Vagina Monologues will be at the Wilbur Theatre March 20 through April 1. Tickets are $25 to $55; call 931-2787.

Issue Date: March 15-22, 2001