Vagina Monologues

It should have been performed this evening, but by mid-morning the show was off. After three months of reading, getting into the ‘nitty-gritty’ and delivering lines with feelings the three female members of Actors Community Theatre Society (ACTS) are feeling flat. Another last minute cancellation has been difficult to get to grips with! The male director-who thought he was in charge- will be pissed off too.

Eve Ensler, a femanist, performer, playwright and activist has written ‘Vagina Monologues’. Apparently it is an ‘episodic play’ and a quote I read has labeled it ‘a poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier’. Well I've been there and back a few times and lived on for another trip. Perhaps I have misunderstood?

Whatever people want to say about the ‘Monolgues’, (let's leave Vagina out as some maybe offended, but it could be better than cunt, of course) but this is a serious piece of writing.

It's based on interviews with over 200 women, young, old and of all ethnicity.  I am only guessing now, have probably had no opportunity to discuss that part of their body that is well hidden and seldom exposed for examination. To give these women the chance to talk are serious matters.

I praise everyone from the birth of the original concept, interviewees and participants who were involved in any production. It's not a new ‘play’ coming from 1996 and earning from the New York Times this accolade ‘the most important piece of political theater of the last decade’. Make of  that what you will.

It was due to be performed tonight, in Rojales, Alicante, Spain, to a limited audience consisting of members of ACTS and invited guests in a restaurant. Our local theatre is still closed and so it was going to be the first performance for the best part of a year. Due to Covid and the locally imposed restrictions it was an unnecessary risk to undertake tonight's show. A decision forced upon us by people not wearing masks who frequented the venue yesterday. The local police called and that was that.

It's crap, but life goes on.

Fortunately, I had sat through two rehearsals. It's explicit and that C word so often not used and hated by some women is carefully and forcibly delivered. Credit to the deliverer. I am sure that some of the audience would not have liked it and I was looking forward to seeing one or two squirm in their seats. Never mind, I can wait because on a better day it will be performed.

Twenty or more years have elapsed since it was written and with that passage of time I am wondering what younger interviewees would have said. Maybe the use of the derogatory Saxon word has become more widely acceptable. 

Michelle and I have seen the play Bitter Wheat by David Hare, about movie mogal Harvey Feinstein and that contained some very uncomfortable lines, but my best example of a woman delivering the C word was Tamsin Greig in Labour of Love. Such wonderful intonation and delivery. The world has moved on from 1996 but Vagina Monologues still lives on.