Eve Ensler: The Vagina Monologues

"I
was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and
even more worried that we don’t think about them… So I decided to talk to women
about their vaginas, to do vagina interviews, which became vagina monologues. I
talked with hundreds of women. I talked to old women, young women, married
women, single women, lesbians, college professors, actors, corporate
professionals, sex workers, African American women, Hispanic women, Asian
American women, Native American women, Caucasian women, Jewish women. At first,
women were reluctant to talk. They were a little shy. But once they got going,
you couldn’t stop them."
When the American playwright, poet, activist and screenwriter Eve Ensler
began performing her one-woman-show The Vagina Monologues, she couldn't
have had an idea of the global success and echoes it was going to have less
than 5 years later. Today, her 1997 Obie Award winning play is one of the most
talked about pieces in recent theatre. It is being performed by a dream-team cast
of Hollywood stars which no director could
ever dream of having for a movie. The published text of the play became an
absolute bestseller, and, after its American success-story, The Vagina
Monologues are now going global, with performances from Jerusalem
to Berlin, Athens
to Zagreb and a hit run in London.
So what's all the fuss about? It began with interviews, hundreds of
interviews, interviews with women of all courses of life. Eve asked them about
their vagina. "There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them,
like the Bermuda triangle. Nobody ever reports
back from there."
She edited the interviews and compiled them into a monologue. Eve calls The
Vagina Monologues "theatrical anthropology". She gives voice to a
chorus of lusty, outrageous, poignant, brave, highly original and thoroughly
human stories. It's a combination of drama and comedy. The play brazenly
explores the humour, power, pain, wisdom, outrage, mystery and excitement
hidden in vaginas. Although at moments it's deeply disturbing (such as the
section on the Bosnian rape victims), the real strength of The Vagina
Monologues is humour.
And that's precisely the power of Ensler's work: through her
provocative, funny, and hilarious "all you always wanted to say about
your vagina, but never dared to" she draws attention to a serious
cause.
Frustrated by the fact that "in our enlightened age, we allow
rape, domestic violence, cultural and political violence to be part of our
society", Eve Ensler called together a group of diverse women from the
arts, the media, the women’s movement and corporate America to form the V-DAY
Committee.  Determined that the best way
to raise consciousness to stop violence against women (and money for existing
NGO's dealing with these issues) is through provocative theatre featuring
well-known talent that would excite the mainstream media, these women decided
to organise throughout the US
benefit readings of the Vagina Monologues on Valentine's Day (V-Day). The
strategy worked and is continuing to work. On hundreds of stages, stars such as
Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett, Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg,
Rosie Perez, Kate Winslett, Melanie Griffith, or Brooke Shields have appeared
on stage to lend their talent to the cause. Currently, the V-Day Committee is
preparing V-Day 2001, an event that "will rock Madison Square
Garden with Eve Ensler's
newest work, Points of Reentry, and music from women around the
world".
The City of Women
festival has invited, and is proud to present the Rumanian born, now Paris-based,
cult and "cinema-d'auteurs" actress Elina Löwensohn.
Having heard The Vagina Monologues, no one – woman or man – will
ever look at the world in the same way again.

Production and organisation Mesto žensk/ City of Women
In cooperation with Slovenska kinoteka
Sponsored by Adria Airways

No tickets
will be sold for the reading of The Vagina Monologues. Your financial
contribution of minimum 1000 SIT will be donated to the Slovene Association
Against Sexual Abuse.