Vaginas are everywhere. They go by different names: Vagina, vah jay jay, pussy, punami, cunt…the list goes on. They are impossible to avoid. Everyone has had some type of association with at least one, if not multiple vaginae.
In fact, there is a high chance that the reader of this newspaper has been pushed out of one. Despite this, most are not knowledgeable concerning this important sexual organ – much less aware of the negative connotations and oppression that possessing one still brings women today.
Eve Ensler tackled this problem while writing her provocatively empowering episodic play, “The Vagina Monologues.” Encompassing such loaded topics as menstruation, rape and orgasm, “The Vagina Monologues” have grown in popularity since its original 1996 production – culminating in the creation of the V-Day movement. Productions of “The Vagina Monologues” held in the months of February and April donate a percentage of their profits to the campaign, which benefits anti-violence organizations targeting different communities of women in need every year.
In a recent interview with The Badger Herald, Campus Women’s Center Program Coordinator Rae Lymer tackled the problem of creating awareness not just of “The Vagina Monologues” but of women’s issues in general.
“We really hope to bring awareness to a lot of issues that are so detrimental to women. The monologues bring up a lot of aspects of women’s lives from masturbation to childbirth to sexual assault – all things that are very real to women here on campus and around the world,” she said.
Forming this awareness is just the beginning for the CWC, however, as the proceeds of “The Vagina Monologues” benefit not just the Campus Women’s Center and this year’s V-Day spotlight, Women in Haiti, but also Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS) and Love 146. A recent addition to the University of Wisconsin’s student organizations, Love 146 seeks to combat child trafficking and exploitation.
Having put on performances of “The Vagina Monologues” in the past, the CWC switched things up with this year’s performance under the direction of UW junior Misti Smith and Edgewood College’s Loni Arendt.
“Of ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ this [production] is going to be vastly different. The two co-directors have completely taken it in a different artistic direction, utilizing props in a much more multifaceted way than we have in the past,” Lymer said. “Monologues will be broken up in ways that make them really interesting and keep you entertained. There’s going to be a lot of new things and ways of putting everything together that will change the way the show looks and how people view it.”
As for as the people “viewing it” that Lymer referred to, the audience the CWC hopes to attract is not predominantly female.
“We don’t want it to be really one-sided in terms of gender. We don’t want it to be just women. We don’t want just men. We want everybody there because everyone knows a woman. I don’t care how you identify; everybody has been in contact with and has had some sort of relationship with a woman,” Lymer said.
This concept is heightened even further as Lymer discussed the controversy that has surrounded the production in the past: Most notably critiques that the play pits itself against men.
“I don’t see ‘The Vagina Monologues’ as being anti-male,” Lymer said. “I don’t. There’s even a monologue about a pleasant sexual experience with a man so [‘The Vagina Monologues’ is] not lesbian-orientated or very much like ‘men-are-the-enemy.’ The show is very fun-loving and very much embracing and empowering to women while giving them that agency because [with] the way things are in our society, women’s issues are suppressed.”
While “The Vagina Monologues” certainly empowers and educates its audiences – the series, above all, entertains. Crowds flocking to the Wisconsin Union Theater this weekend will find it hard to disagree, as expressed by Lymer.
“I want audiences to leave smiling. I want them to feel like they have been empowered in one way or another, whether that’s through learning something new, from giggling about someone’s experience to just really being able to understand someone else’s experience in a different way than [they] would have been able to,” she said.
“The Vagina Monologues” will be held at the Wisconsin Union Theater Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15, $10 with a valid student ID and are available at Memorial Union’s Box Office.
