‘Vagina Monologues’ takes center stage

With a little more than mild trepidation, I entered the College Center Grand Ballroom to be utterly surrounded by more than 40 intelligent women, all gathered to celebrate the one characteristic they all share: their vaginas. I didn't know what to expect as I opened the door. Would it be enemy territory— the women finding a focus for their rage in me, a representation of male oppression? Would my presence be a catalyst to break their inner circle, a constant distraction to their camaraderie. I steeled myself for the worst, but nothing happened. In fact, I was changed — I learned something.

The Vagina Monologues emerge from interviews of more than 200 women by playwright Eve Ensler. These conversations poetically give voice to the emotions and thoughts of women around the United States and the globe. Although it can be performed as a single-woman show, the one directed by senior Crystal Munson, which opens this week, features an enormous cast of thirty-four students, faculty and staff.

"Eve Ensler asks in her Web site to let anyone who would like to participate in this show to do so," Munson said. "I guess I took that statement too literally." Munson’s 40-member cast certainly took advantage of the lax requirements for participation.

All royalties are suspended during Valentine's Day benefit shows, "to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities." JMU's version of the play will give 80 percent of the proceeds to CASA an organization helping men, women and children who suffer from the lingering effects of sexual assault.

This fact led me to ask: How exactly does this play directly relate to ending violence and/or oppression?

"It's difficult for me to imagine that someone in the audience walks out of seeing this play and thinks, ‘Gosh, I need to tell my teenage daughter it's OK for her to talk about her vagina in public,’" said Paul Hildebrand, professor of theater at Hanover College in Indiana. "I suspect that a poll of most of the audience likely to see this play would reveal that they are already-enlightened leftists — i.e. preaching to the choir — or because it's reputed to be controversial and they want to see what all the fuss is about."

Munson saw things in a completely different light. "This play is more about the education of how to be a woman and how to remove the negative connotations a lot of men and woman have of vaginas," Munson said. "It is a celebration of life, and I hope that people leaving this play will have a better respect for women and themselves in general."

The first half of the play opens with "Hair," a diatribe of rage at one woman's husband, who implores her to shave her vagina. Convincingly played by senior Lori Smilowitz, it describes her humiliation and pain over her now-naked genitalia. "Look at it," she pleads, "All puffy and raw. It scratches and pains me now during sex." She continues, telling her therapist how her pain led her to stop shaving off the hair, and how her husband became unfaithful to her. Although this was quite a painful experience for the character, she now knows how to love her body, hair and all.

This realization, that "To love the vagina is to love hair" is not the only level of abstraction women need for themselves. A particularly bizarre portion of the plays asks the women what their vagina would wear. Answers ranged from high-heeled shoes to burlap sacks.

I had no idea so many women felt shame in regards to their own bodies. Several of the playlets describe how many women have never seen their vaginas — even a 70-year-old woman, as told in the piercingly sad rendition of "The Flood." The poor woman had such an embarrassingly humiliating experience in her teenage years that it caused her to forego all contemplation of her sexual organs. In fact, she completely shuts herself off in her later years from any sexual experience except in dreams.

Other women, with less repressive memories, attend classes to learn about themselves, as in the skit "The Vagina Workshop." Apparently looking at one’s vagina isn’t easy — it requires odd positions and a mirror.

Jessica Horning plays an attendee at one of these workshops and tells the audience of her trials and tribulations in the class. Having never seen her clitoris before, she is frantic and disturbed that she cannot find it. "Be the clitoris," she intones.

"I Was Twelve. My Mother Slapped Me, " an ensemble piece from the play, tells of each woman's first period experience. Shocking in detail, it relates the shame — and yes, joy — every woman feels at the moment of her first menstruation. I was beginning to despair over these poor women and was starting to rue the start of the second half. However, all my fears were dispelled by the true start of the second half, a balanced depiction of empowerment and pain.

"The Angry Vagina" features a bombastic Cannie Campbell, the associate director of health promotion, probably the best actress in the play. Campbell and the three other actresses in this monologue represent the fully-actualized woman, those that know exactly what they want and how to get it.

The next portion of the play is by far the most haunting and disturbing. Senior Colleen Pettie gives us a glimpse of true hell in "My Vagina Was My Village," in which a young woman life is ravaged by the inhumane consequences of war. Her heartbreaking and graphic retelling of her gang rape at the hands of soldiers during the Bosnian war is extremely difficult to watch.

How the author can possibly follow up such a disturbing scene with frank discussions of orgasms, I'll never know.

Even with this disjointed story flow, I can barely contain the glee I received from the show-stopping "Reclaiming Cunt." Sophomore Madeline German is brilliant describing the various forms and stages of the female orgasm. Better than Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally," German brings the art of the fake orgasm to heights heretofore never seen.

The play ends fittingly with "I Was There in the Room," a retelling of a birth. It oddly contains many similarities to the rape story, "My Vagina Was My Village." Consider "A piece of my vagina come off in my hand," versus "A see it mutilated, broken, torn; a wide red, pulsating heart." At first I was very disturbed by these similitudes. Later, I realized maybe it is exactly this yin/yang relationship that should tie all of us — both men and women — together, to a common goal of ending repression and violence against each other.

The Vagina Monologues will be performed at the College Center Ballroom Feb. 14-16 at 7:30 p.m.