I rarely feel extreme anger, so I'll resist my urge to use that word and instead describe what I have felt over the past couple of months as "extreme upset". As many of you know, I have been the head of the official Toronto production of The Vagina Monologues, in the V-Day Worldwide Campaign (www.vday.org), since September 2006. I have produced the show four times, directed it three and acted in it three, including once before I became Producer. I worked in front-of-house during its first two commercial runs in Toronto. I have seen the show performed brilliantly, and not-so-well. TVM is truly one of the shows that you form an opinion about depending on which production you were fortunate or unfortunate enough to see, because productions of it can be so vastly different depending on the director, whether you see it performed with 3 people or 20, as a reading or as a play, by actors or non-actors, by 1st-year university students or middle-aged women. Whether you've seen great stagings of it or mediocre stagings of it, and whether or not it's your cup of tea, there is ONE thing about The Vagina Monologues that has never changed -- and that is its intention and its heart.
When playwright Eve Ensler began performing TVM as a one-woman show in coffeehouses in NYC thirteen years ago, she had no idea what the reaction would be. What it was was women lining up by the dozens after each show to talk to her, and what they talked about shocked her. Instead of the funny anecdotes she was expecting, the stories were those of molestation, rape, incest and neglect. Overwhelmed by the pain and the number of these accounts, Eve decided to use The Vagina Monologues as a fundraiser for anti-violence initiatives and women's shelters. In that moment, the incredible international movement known as V-Day was born. Since then, The Vagina Monologues and the mission of V-Day have been inextricably linked. The show remains, more than perhaps any piece of theatre in the world, a honest account of the myriad of innately female experiences. The monologues are based on the true stories of women that Eve interviewed about their lives, and the most important component in the telling of these stories is that it is women speaking for their counterparts - other women. So when I was contacted a few months ago and informed that a local theatre company was planning to stage a production of The Vagina Monologues with some men in the cast, I thought I was being Punk'd. Surely, someone had to have heard wrong. This couldn't actually be in the works. But then I was told by a friend that her male friend was auditioning, and realized that this was actually happening. I flipped. Not in a loud screaming way, but in an internal seething way. I simply couldn't believe it. My instinct was to make a phone call immediately, but I didn't.
Instead I stayed up that night thinking. Thinking about what the show was, what it means, and what it has become. Thinking about the fact that it has been translated into 40 languages and performed in over 1,500 cities around the world. Thinking about the fact that some of the women whom I was fortunate enough to meet at V-Day's 10th anniversary in New Orleans - the producers of V-Day Islamabad, V-Day Congo, V-Day Baghdad, V-Day Sarajevo - had literally risked their lives and been threatened with execution if they staged the show but did it anyway because they wanted women's stories told. Thinking about the fact that many of the women who performed in the show around the world felt that TVM had become a unifier between them and women across the ocean whose daily realities were so different but whose internal experiences mirrored their own. Thinking about the fact that a show that many dismiss here is a declaration of existence for many of these women. Thinking of the fact that for Zoya in Afghanistan, TVM is the one secret thing that the women there have that is exclusively theirs in a society ruled by men. Thinking of the fact that so many women over the years - including myself - became actors because TVM was that one show that created such a loving and non-intimidating girlspace. Thinking about the fact that TVM has turned women into activists all over the world because they can proudly claim and speak these words as the words of their sisters.
I sat up in bed with a cup of tea thinking Hell no. I didn't want to upset Eve, who is fighting her own fight and shouldn't have to deal with this type of nonsense. But I also knew that Eve would never, EVER be okay with this. I was in touch with her and the V-Day staff the next morning. Everyone was shocked and angered. They were on it right away. I mean first of all, when you endeavour to change a piece of work in such a way that it alters the very nature of the work, you need to seek permission to do that. This was never done. But more than that, I was appalled that this "theatre company" was producing a show without the most basic of requirements -- SOME level of understanding as to what the play they want to produce actually IS ABOUT. I went to the company's website. The opening to their show description was "In a classic battle of the sexes..." My jaw hit the floor.
- TT
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