The Vagina Monologues is a theater-piece about the infamous body part. The Portland State University Women’s Resource Center is bringing this production to campus Feb. 14 – 16, 2002.
The Vagina Monologues are the creation of Eve Ensler, an award-winning playwright, poet, activist and screenwriter. Ensler interviewed 200 of women about their vaginas. She transformed the women’s stories into monologues.
“The story of your vagina is the story of your life, and women want to talk about their lives,” Ensler said in a women.com interview.
Polly Brige, office manager for the Women’s Resource Center, said that this is a very collaborative production.
“If you want to be involved you can,” Brige said.
Monday and Tuesday The Women’s’ Resource Center had a general interest meeting for students who wanted to be involved in the February production. Brige said about thirty people were in attendance.
The interviews Ensler did for The Vagina Monologues included women talking about their often-ignored sex organs.
Ensler from an excerpt of the book The Vagina Monologues, wrote,”For example, I never once heard the word clitoris. It would be years before I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function other than to feel pleasure. (If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it-and what it would be used to justify?)”
Ensler had asked the women questions that probed into the most intimate topics of female sexuality. The women were a mix of age, race and socio-economic background. The stories range from humorous to moving.
The Vagina Monologues have been performed in cities all across the United States and at hundreds of college campuses. It has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement, dubbed V-Day, to stop violence against women.
The Vagina Monologues was originally produced in New York at downtown’s HERE in 1996. In a benefit to fight domestic violence, Vagina was performed in New York Valentine’s Day, 1998, as a part of V-Day.
V-DAY is a movement to raise consciousness about women’s liberation. V-Day seeks to strengthen efforts already in progress and initiate new projects in publicity, education and law. The V-Day effort is to raise funds for local, national and international groups that work to stop violence against women.
Ensler is an incest and battering survivor.
Brige said the beneficiary for the ticket proceeds for the Portland State production will go to the Women’s Resource Center.
Some of Ensler other works include: The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary Measures, Conviction, Lemonade, Ladies and Scooncat.
For more information about the Women’s Resource Center or The Vagina Monologues e-mail women@pdx.edu or call at 503-725-5672.