The Vagina Monologues
Necessary Targets

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES
A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The Vagina Monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. In this stunning phenomenon that has swept the nation, Eve Ensler gives us real women's stories of intimacy, vulnerability, and sexual self-discovery.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
EVE ENSLER's Obie Award-winning play, The Vagina Monologues, has enjoyed a sold-out run at Off-Broadway's Westside Theatre and plays in theaters all over the world, initiated V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women. Ensler's performance of The Vagina Monologues will be seen on HBO in the new year. Her play Necessary Targets has had benefit performances on Broadway, at the National Theater in Sarajevo, and at the Kennedy Center, and will open in New York this year. Other plays include Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary Measures, Ladies, and Scooncat. She is working on a new book and play, The Good Body. Ensler received a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting. She lives in New York City with her partner, Ariel Orr Jordan.

Audio Excerpt from The Vagina Monologues

Eve Ensler, read by the author |Social Science - Women's Studies | Random House Audible | Audio CD (Unabridged) | January 2002 | $19.95 | 0-553-71468-6

An exclusive audio interview with Eve Ensler:

 

  1. What are the Origins of The Vagina Monologue?
I always say that I feel like The Vagina Monologues was a divine accident. It is something I didn't plan, figure, structure or organize. When I was talking to a friend about menopause, we got onto the subject of her vagina (as you will do when you are talking about menopause). She said things about her vagina that really surprised me. She felt like her vagina was dried up and dead, finished and disgusting and I thought, "Oh my god, is this what women think about their vaginas?" After that, I found causally asking friends, "Well, what do you think about your vagina?" And every woman that I spoke to said something more remarkable, outrageous, disturbing and funnier than the next. It happened that one woman would say, "Oh you really should talk to so and so about her vagina." Then another woman would say "Oh you really need to talk to her she has such an amazing story." Before I knew it, I was sucked down the vagina trail and I haven't gotten off since.
  1. Did you find that women were talking about their vaginas more than you thought they would be?

I don't think that women had a forum in which they could talk about their vaginas. I think that once the possibility of discussion was opened, or a space was presented in which women could talk, they were more than happy to tell their stories. It was like an opening of floodgates. I really feel that the story of your vagina is the story of your life. To have an opportunity to look at your vagina and look at your relationship with your vagina and your feelings about your vagina is not something that happens often.

  1. What kind of response have you gotten from audiences?

People really seem to respond to the piece. It's all over the world. It's in 25 countries and 6 cities in America. I think because the piece is based on women's stories, people hear it and they find themselves somewhere within the piece. If they don't connect with one they connect with another. I think there are taboos that are lifted with each performance. There is a wall that is being broken through and it is a wall we need to crash through. This wall has virtually kept women disempowered and violated, and I think people feel the wall crumbling a bit during the performance. They feel that something is going on, and it is liberating them and empowering them. It is allowing their real stories and real experiences to matter and count in the culture.

  1. How do you think The Vagina Monologues speaks to men?

Well the piece is obviously geared towards women and I don't know that it speaks directly to men. However, anything that speaks to women, will, in the end, speak to men. I have had fantastic responses from men. I have always said if you want to meet a good man go to The Vagina Monologues because they are there. What I mean by that is often the men who come to The Vagina Monologues are tender, interesting, desiring be good lovers, interested in vaginas or identifying with vaginas. The men in the audience range from fathers who bring their daughters and are really moved and feel protective of their daughters, to men in their 70s who come back to see me and say, "Oh my God, I've never understood!" Of course, their girlfriends come back to see me a month later and bless me and thank me because something has changed. There are all kinds of great responses. But, I have never had a man come up to me and not say something positive.

  1. How has your performance changed over the years? does it change with each performance?

You know, my performance changes based on audiences. It has also really changed based on my own confidence and connection to my own vagina. When I started doing this piece I was a very fractured person and very disassociated. I don't think I lived in my vagina, I lived in my head. I walked around the world with a head. I feel like I'm living in my body now. I feel like I'm in my motor I'm in my car I'm driving along. Before, I don't know what I was driving along in, some kind of head space ship. The difference is that is that I see how being connected to my vagina is equal to being connected to my desire, my ambition my mission my purpose, my reason for being here. When I was disconnected, I felt adrift. I felt I couldn't get on track. I wasn't on the trail. I felt very, very different.

  1. So much of the play is personal...Are you touched by any particular piece when you perform?

Some nights I just start crying in the middle of The Floods. I can't help it when I think about a woman who had one bad sexual experience and then closed up shop. Obviously, the Bosnia piece ALWAYS disturbs me, having been in Bosnia during the war, those women are always in my heart. The Koochie Snorcher piece takes me out. All of them have the power to effect me depending on where I am in my cycle! I never know what is going to grab me. I've done the Bob piece, the piece that includes "because you like to look at it" and sometimes in the middle of that piece I suddenly understand that this woman hated her vagina and I just get completely crushed by it! All the women I interviewed moved me and live in me. Sometimes the greatest part about performing this piece is that when you really listen to people it is an act of love and when you then play them back it's another act of love. I'm in love with these women and sometimes they rise up in me!

  1. Let's talk about V-Day. How did it start and how did you get involved in it?

The first tour I did of The Vagina Monologues was a grass roots tour. I went to a lot of small cities. I went to Oklahoma City. I went to Jerusalem. I started in very small little venues. It was a magnificent tour because all the women that came were kind of doing it in these clandestine, scary ways. This was before The Vagina Monologues was a success. I met women at every single show, in every single city who would come up to me after the show to say that they had been raped or beaten or mutilated or battered. I just started to feel insane. I said I am not going to keep doing The Vagina Monologues unless we can do something about all this violence. In 1997, a group of women got together and we decided to use The Vagina Monologues to serve this cause. We came up with V Day. V Day is a movement, a catalyst, a spirit, a day, valentines day to end violence against women and it is also Valentine's Day. We launched it with a performance of The Vagina Monologues starring wonderful actresses. Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Lilly Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg all came together at The Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC to perform for 2500 people. We raised thousands of dollars and it really launched this movement. Since then, we've been going strong for five years. The Vagina Monologues has been done at hundreds of colleges in cities across the world. In 2001, it was done at 250 colleges in 50 cities around the world and last year it was done at Madison Square Garden. It just keeps growing and growing.

  1. Your life must have changed so much over the past few years. You've come into contact with such a huge network of women and you're keeping in touch with women you most likely never would have met if he Vagina Monologues hadn't happened. What has that been like for you?

AMAZING. It's been a vagina miracle. I was saying to someone while we were preparing for our 2001 Madison Square Garden show that I couldnŐt believe how huge Madison Square Garden is. It fits 18,000 people. I couldn't believe how much we'd grown. V Day has really become a global movement. It's in every country in the world. There were people who flew from every region of the world to be part of the Madison Square Garden show. There is an enormous network of women and men who have been for many years struggling to stop violence and continue to struggle to stop violence against women, but it has been amplified and empowered and emboldened to some degree by this movement. Right now, it feels like there is this magnificent wave that began with The Vagina Monologues that to be honest I didn't have much to do with. I feel like I serve the vagina queens. I just do what they tell me. It has become this wave and there are a lot of people working on this movement. All of us are in the service of this energy that is crucial to ending violence against women. It is a privilege and an honor. I am exhausted and I am thrilled and there is no time to stop right now and that feels daunting but it also feels like a dream. What other thing can someone want in this life than to be at the service of something this huge?

  1. Can you tell me what you are working on now?

I am working on a new piece called The Good Body, which is both a book and a play. I just finished a 14 country tour during which I interviewed women in every country about how they mutilate, transform, bury, hide, and alter their bodies in order to fit in with their particular cultures. It is going to be a series of monologues but it is also going to be a narrative and hopefully it will be done within the next year.?

  1. What do you do when you are not working?

Work.