The Vagina Monologues

Eve Ensler's play "The Vagina Monologues" has been the subject of several
discussions on WMST-L.  The discussion in Part 1 took place in February 2001;
that in Part 2 appeared on WMST-L in July 2003; parts 3 and 4 contain a
discussion from the spring of 2005.  For additional WMST-L files now available
on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

PART 1 OF 4

Hi everyone,

I don't have information on Bay Area productions, but I do have a
question for the entire list about this work.

I too am teaching this text in a Women's Studies/American Culture
Studies course.  We were lucky enough to have a performance in
Detroit that was accessible enough for most of the class to get to
see.  This week, we will be talking about both the performance and
the book (Villard Publishers) that was published of this work.

There were two rather notable differences between the Detroit
performance and the book's text.  One change (for those familiar with
this work) was at the end of the monologue by the 13-year-old girl
who was seduced by the older woman.  The other change was the
complete omission of a monologue that, in the book, immediately
follows the "moaning" monologue and precedes the "birth" monologue.
This monologue challenges Ensler/the reader to begin the discussion
of vaginas "from a lesbian-centered place," and talks about "entering
into vaginas."

Here is my question, to others who have seen this work performed:
Are these changes standard, or were they specific to the Detroit
company?  And, if by chance someone knows that they are standard, do
you have any information about the decision to omit these words from
the performance?

Thanks,
Jeannie

>To: SAN FRANCISCO Bay Area folks,
>
>Any productions of the Vagina Monologues happening this week or in the next
>couple of weeks?  Let me know.  I'm using the play as a required text in a
>Sociology of Sexuality class at San Francisco State.  Our SF State
>production won't happen until the end of April because of restrictions
>around competing with the commercial production currently running in SF.
>
>Could you please respond to me at my SF State email : dgerson    AT    sfsu.edu.
>
>Thanks a lot. And I'd really love to hear from any other women's studies or
>feminist social science folks who are using the play in  classes.
>
>                 Deborah Gerson
>                  Social Science and Sociology, SFSU
>                 dgerson    AT    sfsu.edu
>                             dgerson    AT    itsa.ucsf.edu

--

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Dr. Jeannie Ludlow                jludlow    AT    bgnet.bgsu.edu
American Culture Stds            (419)372-0176
107 East Hall                spring 2001 office hours:
Bowling Green State U               T 9:30-noon & 1:30-4:00;
Bowling Green OH 43403                 WF 1:30-4:00; & by appt.

Several years ago, I saw a performance of the VAGINA MOLOGUES in DC
performed by the author Eve Ensler, and she said (there was a discussion
with her after the performance) that each performance is different.  She
uses different material each time.

It also might be of interest to the list that February 14 has been named
Vagina Day, and in honor of the play and the author many performances of
Vagina Monologues by leading actresses (e.g., Glenn Close, Jane Fonda,
Rosie Perez, Lynn Whitfield, etc., etc.) have been scheduled. The play has
become a movement. There was an article in a recent Washington Post, which
I don't have before me, which explains how the profits are going to
non-profit centers that help abused women and rape victims.

                --Temma Berg

-----------------
Temma F. Berg
Co-coordinator of Women's Studies
Associate Professor
Department of English
Gettysburg College
717-337-6753
tberg    AT    gettysburg.edu

Here's a link to the Washington Post article

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47831-2001Feb9?language=printer

Arnie
--
Arnie Kahn   Day 540-568-3963   Night 540-434-0225   Fax 540-568-3322
kahnas    AT    jmu.edu
Dept. of Psych.-MSC 7401, James Madison U., Harrisonburg, VA 22807
http://cep.jmu.edu/kahnas/
"Where mediocrity is the norm, it is not long before mediocrity becomes the
ideal."
A. N. Wilson

After the student performance of the Vagina Monologues at St. Mary's
College in Notre Dame, Indiana, was cancelled by the college president,
(there was a performance last year)the library at the University of Notre
Dame has had several requests for a videotaped performance. I have not been
able to locate a video of the Monologues. Does anyone know if there is one
available for purchase? It would be great if one of the actresses listed
below could make a performance available for video sales and have profits
go to non-profit centers.

***************************************************************
G. Margaret Porter
Librarian, Reference Department
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame IN 46556

Phone:219-631-7620
Fax:  219-631-8887
E-Mail: porter.2    AT    nd.edu

Information about V-Day and the Vagina Monologues, as well as the incredible
event in Madison Square Garden can be found at:  www.v-day.org.
Mary Lynn W. Hopps

Hi everyone,
I want to amend my earlier comment about the performance of The
Vagina Monologues that we saw in Detroit; it seems that my
description is confusing folks.

The monologue by the 13-year-old girl who was seduced by an older
woman was performed.  However, in the published text of the work,
there is a concluding paragraph that was not performed.  The
paragraph says, in part, "Now people say that it was a kind of rape.
I was only thirteen and she was twenty-four.  Well, I say, if it was
a rape, it was a good rape then, a rape that turned my sorry-ass
coochi-snorcher [vagina] into a kind of heaven" (75).

The decision to leave these lines out of the performance troubles me
quite a bit, although I can imagine why people would be reluctant to
say "good rape" out loud in any setting.

These are the lines whose omission I was curious about.

Thanks,
Jeannie

PS  For those of you who have talked about the high price of the
play, check with the local theater to see if there are discounts for
students.  The production in Detroit was $45/ticket.  However, with a
valid student ID, my students got to sit in back-row (but very good
back row) seats for $15/ticket.  When I called the ticket sellers for
general information, I was told that there were no special discounts.
However, when a student of mine contacted the theater manager, she
learned that there were both group discounts and student prices!
--

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Dr. Jeannie Ludlow                jludlow    AT    bgnet.bgsu.edu
American Culture Stds            (419)372-0176
107 East Hall                spring 2001 office hours:
Bowling Green State U               T 9:30-noon & 1:30-4:00;
Bowling Green OH 43403                 WF 1:30-4:00; & by appt.

Re:  availability of a "Vagina Monologues" video--I don't know of one that
is currently available, but HBO is doing a half documentary/half performance
of "VM" this fall (see the Washington Post article posted today to the list
on this and, most likely, HBO's website once fall approaches for more
information about the special, air dates, etc.).  You could always tape the
HBO piece yourself for use in classes.  I think, if I remember correctly,
that the HBO piece will consist of Eve Ensler's solo performance, however,
which is different than the multi-city productions that feature three women.

Re:  variation of "VM" material across shows--I have seen the show in New
York and Chicago, and both shows contained the same material (different
interpretations from different actresses, of course, but the same monologues
were featured in both shows).

Best, Jennifer Rexroat

Jennifer L. Rexroat
Doctoral Candidate and Instructor
Gender and Women's Studies Concentration
UIC Department of Political Science
1007 West Harrison Street (MC 276)
Chicago, IL 60607-7137
Phone:  (773) 381-5388
Fax:  (773) 381-5399
E-mail:  jrexro1    AT    uic.edu

I recently saw the show in Chicago and Even Ensler gave an extra-textual
explanation for the monologue about the 13 year-old girl.  She said that
many people have expressed concern to her that one of the pieces about
lesbian sexuality concerns a pedophilic rape.  While she acknowledged
sensitivity to this concern, she felt it was important to retain the
monologue AS REPORTED to her.  This was the interviewee's experience, and
she felt that she needed to respect that.  As un-PC as the experience might
have been, it was transformative for the woman in question.

Regina Buccola
Roosevelt University

I'd like to address the questions and issues that people have brought up 
re: "The Vagina Monologues" and V-Day.  As the Director of the
V-Day  College Initiative, I may be able to help clarify certain
matters.

First of all, Mary Lynn Hopps was right.  She wrote, "Information
about  V-Day and the Vagina Monologues, as well as the incredible
event in Madison Square Garden can be found at:  www.v-day.org."
"The Vagina Monologues" has become the centerpiece of V-Day
events worldwide.  V-Day is a movement to stop violence against
women.  Its goal is to raise awareness and money to stop this
violence through productions of "The Vagina Monologues." In
addition to the V-Day productions but separate from them are
commercial productions of the play nationwide and in Canada. 
Despite the distinction of commercial productions and V-Day 
productions, many commercial productions have been generous enough
to donate some of their proceeds to organizations working to stop
violence against women in their communities.

Secondly, Temma Berg was also right.  Eve Ensler does say (and
prove)  that every performance of "The Vagina Monologues" is
different, whether due to different audiences, different
performers or changes in the script.  The script HAS changed many
times.  This often happens to accommodate the number of actresses
performing the piece - from one at a time (usually Eve only), to
three at a time, to more than a dozen at a time.  It happens when
being customized for certain kinds of productions of "The Vagina
Monologues" - commercial, College Initiative, Worldwide 
Initiative, etc.  And it has also happened over time, because Eve
is "updating" the piece to include more new stories that she has
been told by people, to include more current facts and
statistics, etc.  The changes in the script over time also
explain why some monologues previously found in the play are now
missing and some new ones have been added or changed.  Such is
the case with "Entering Vaginas" and with the end of the "Coochi
Snorcher" piece, for example.  "The Vagina Monologues" is an
ever-evolving work.

Third, if anyone is trying to locate College or Worldwide
Initiative  events in their areas, the lists of the participants
can be found at the V-Day website.  For contact information for
schools on the College Initiative Participating Schools list
ONLY, please feel free to ask me.  The Worldwide Initiative
contacts are listed at the website.

Finally, there is no LEGAL videotape of "The Vagina Monologues." If
you get your hands on one, assume that it is NOT an official or
sanctioned one.  It is true, however, that an HBO production of
"The Vagina Monologues" is currently scheduled to air toward the
end of this coming summer.  I'm sure the precise date will be
announced at the V-Day website when it is known.

I hope this information helps.

Karen Obel
Director
V-Day 2001 College Initiative
kobel    AT    rcn.com
college    AT    vday.org
www.vday.org/index.cfm?ArticleID=3D69

V-Day 2001 at Madison Square Garden, February 10, 2001...
a HUGE success!

V-Day | Until the Violence Stops
www.vday.org

Dear Diane,
I took several sociologists and others to see the play and we were very
disappointed.  All they said was said years before in Our Bodies Our Selves
and by the women's health movement.  A  woman from the health movement did
cervical self examination at an SWS meeting at the natl ASA meetings in the
seventies and my class did the same at Chicago Circle at Diana Scully's
house (Diana is secy of NWSA).  When you teach the play, it would enhance
the studehnts' learning , and appreciate of their foremothers if you
pointed this out.  The Vagina Monologues did not invent it.
Best, Pauline

A rising tide lifts all yachts.
           Professor Lani Guanier
           NWSA Meeting, 2000

pbart    AT    ucla.edu  310-841-2657

At 11:01 AM 2/24/01 -0800, Pauline Bart wrote:
>Dear Diane,
>I took several sociologists and others to see the play and we were very
>disappointed.  All they said was said years before in Our Bodies Our Selves
>and by the women's health movement.  A  woman from the health movement did
>cervical self examination at an SWS meeting 

You don't understand: history no longer exissts.  Everything must be done
over and over again every ten years .  That's how it is now.  We have to
keep finding new ways to say things we understand thirty years ago.


marge piercy hagolem    AT    c4.net

<< >I took several sociologists and others to see the play and we were very
>disappointed.  All they said was said years before in Our Bodies Our Selves
>and by the women's health movement.  A  woman from the health movement did
>cervical self examination at an SWS meeting at the na
>

>>You don't understand: history no longer exissts.  Everything must be done
over and over again every ten years .  That's how it is now.  We have to
keep finding new ways to say things we understand thirty years ago.>>

Not to mention the fact that in the play, women of all ages were talking
about their *history* with their vaginas (following interviews conducted by
Ensler.). A 40+ woman and older would of course recall the 70s.

Georgia NeSmith
gnesmith    AT    aol.com

To add to the historical context and dimensions that Pauline Bart has
provided for students, on the local level in Middlesex County (NJ) N.O.W. in
the 70's, after the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves came out, Beryl
Cameron, who led our c.r. sessions, also led several meetings in which she
showed the members of the audience, using her own body on a table on a
platform, exactly  how to use the speculum to do self-examinations. Someone
else whom I cannot remember, most probably a nurse,  also brought models of
breasts to another meeting and showed each one of us, in turn, how to
examine our breasts and how growths would feel.

Dr. Phillipa Kafka
Professor Emerita
Kean University
pkafka    AT    lvcm.com

I read the text of the play before going to see it, and I shared
Pauline's dismay that we were saying these things again.  Although I
am just barely 40, I count myself incredibly lucky.  The "Sex Ed" I
received in elementary and jr. hi (in both Health courses and "Home
Ec" courses) had clearly been influenced by the progresses made by
feminists--and this was in a tiny rural, working class community
school.

However, I find now that my students come to me with very little
knowledge of women's bodies.  Most of my students cannot discuss
knowledgably vaginas, much less clitorises  or cervices!  Often, when
we begin talking about sex and the body, students are a bit dismayed
to learn that the vaginal and urethral "openings" are separate.  My
own son had an incredibly ineffective "sex ed" talk in the 5th grade
and has had very little info since, except what he gets at home, of
course.

In the preface and introduction to the book version of The Vagina
Monologues, both Ensler and Steinem talk about the progresses of
feminist work and the regression of recent times.  This regression is
likely to get worse before it gets better.  Pauline is right--we must
acknowledge the wonderful work of our feminist foremothers, but we
must also be relieved to note that people are coming up with ways to
re-state what has already been done, so that younger women and men
get to hear about women's bodies and women's relationships to our
bodies.

Jeannie

PS If anyone else is interested in these issues, I got what looks
like a pretty good text recently.  It is called "Women's Health" (3rd
ed) and is ed. by Worcester and Whatley.  One thing I love about this
text is that the editors indicate "classic texts" in the table of
contents and on the 1st page of each classic text.  I love that my
students will see that we have a canon!
--

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Dr. Jeannie Ludlow                jludlow    AT    bgnet.bgsu.edu
American Culture Stds            (419)372-0176
107 East Hall                spring 2001 office hours:
Bowling Green State U               T 9:30-noon & 1:30-4:00;
Bowling Green OH 43403                 WF 1:30-4:00; & by appt.

Hello, Listmembers

First, thanks to Pauline Bart for her reminder that much of what is in
the Vagina Monologues, at least insofar as consciousness-raising in a
certain historical moment is concerned, is not new.
Thanks, as well, to [Marge Piercy], for her important (albeit, painful)
reminder that, according to far too many, "history no longer exits."
That being said, I want to argue that the belief, claim or attitude
that "history no longer exists"  neither makes it so, nor exempts us
from pointing out that,  a la music lyrics, "everything old is new
again," or, a la assertions from Hebrew scriptures, "there is nothing
new under the sun."

Yes, women of all ages were interviewed by Ensler.  However, although
history, according to some, no longer exists, math in base ten does.
Accordingly, those who are 40+, do not, "as a matter of course [at least
in 2000-2001] recall the 70s."  Someone who is 40 in 2001 was not born
until 1961, and wasn't traditional college age, i.e., 18, until 1979.
Thus, it is more likely that Seventeen magazine would have been her
reading fare, than _Our Bodies, Ourselves_ or other similar texts in the
'70s.   She most certainly would not have been a college activist in the
70s because she would not have gotten there, yet.  Moreover, at that
age, she would not necessarily have had any idea that access to oral
contraceptives or legal abortions, not to mention public discussions of
women's bodies, were relatively recent developments in U.S. society.

For this reason, among others, there continues to be the necessity of
seminars  that have as their central concern, for example, comparing
primary texts of the lesbian and feminist movements of the' 70s (the
so-called second wave) with those that purport to report about/critique
those movements.   Just as reading a book review or literary criticism
does not replace reading a novel, reading (or viewing) others' 'take'
cannot replace lived experiences, whether their historical moment is
1961, 1991, or 2001.   My point, here, is to urge all of us to pay
closer attention to the actual chronological moments in which different
women's histories and texts arise and arose, as well as to urge us to
resist ahistoricism in all its forms, but particularly, for purposes of
this list, as it affects contemporary classrooms.
Frances
***********************************
Frances E. Wood
Institute for Women's Studies
Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322
fwood01    AT    emory.edu

Afraid is a country where they issue us passports
at birth and hope we never seek citizenship
in any other country.  The face of afraid keeps
changing constantly, and I can count on that
change.  I need to travel light and fast, and
there's a lot of baggage I'm going to have
to leave behind me.  Jettison cargo.
                     Audre Lorde, "A Burst of Light"