A benefit production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues will be staged at the Kleinert/James Arts Center in Woodstock, celebrating the 12th anniversary of V-Day on Friday and Saturday, April 23 and 24 at 7:30 p.m., with an afternoon performance on Saturday at 3 p.m. A global movement to stop violence against women and girls, V-Day is a catalyst for communities to hold events that raise awareness and funds in support of organizations serving women.
Each year Ensler dedicates V-Day to a certain group of women in strife. Ninety percent of the proceeds that V-Day Woodstock raises this year will go to Family Domestic Violence Services, a branch of Family of Woodstock. The remaining ten percent will go to Ensler’s V-Day Organization, which she has focused on the women and girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo this year.
Written in 1996 and originally performed onstage by Ensler alone, The Vagina Monologues is shocking, funny, poignant, terrifying, sad and brash, to suggest but a few possible audience reactions. It focuses on that heretofore-unmentionable female body part and all the ways that women feel about themselves, depending on the ways in which they’ve been raised, used and abused.
The text has been added to and revised in worldwide performances over these 14 years, and Ensler’s addition of a piece that reflects the atrocious experiences of Congolese women and girls, caught in a war said to be the deadliest conflict since World War II, will be included in this performance. She reports that advocates on the ground approximate that 500,000 women and girls have been raped and sexually tortured in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and that a systematic destruction of the female population is taking place there. “A Teenage Girl’s Guide to Surviving Sex Slavery” is her new monologue addressing this horrific situation.
All is not atrocities and horror, however. Ensler has said, “Women’s empowerment is deeply connected to their sexuality.” Additional monologues are “Introduction to Hair,” “The Flood” and many others, performed by 17 voices including: Lynda Herbeck, Holly Graff, Julie Kirkpatrick, Marcy D. Thorn, Marcia Albert, Julia Boylan, Terri Mateer, Ellie Arons, Emily Cahill, Maria Toldero, Melita Greenleaf, Dorothy Penz, Jacqueline Denise and Jenny Lang, plus three members of Actors’ Equity Association: Donna Jean Fogel, Barbara Sicuranza and Bekka Lindstrom.
Co-directed and co-produced by Mateer and Carol Fox Prescott, the show’s purpose is to bring local awareness to violence against women and to help end it. Mateer says, “I watched men laugh hysterically during the show last year…it was as if they were getting a glimpse through a peephole at us in a locker room….they really took in the things we were saying that were a bit more on the painful and insightful side. Three personal male friends were so affected by what they learned about women that they are totally different people today. One of them got married. One of them stopped referring to us as ‘girls,’ and the other, I feel from observation, is kinder to his daughter. I myself learned that verbal abuse is violence.” She reiterates that change comes through knowledge, and says that Ensler has created the bravest, funniest and wisest writing imaginable to effect change.
Family of Woodstock develops programs supporting people in need. Its Domestic Violence Services program provides advocacy, education, counseling and shelter to primary victims of violence and their family members, including preventative resources. For more information visit www.familyofwoodstockinc.org or call (845) 331-7080. Admission to The Vagina Monologues is $20 advance (at Golden Notebook in Woodstock) and $25 at the door; plus, $21 e-tickets can be purchased at www.vdaywoodstock.com.