‘Vagina Monologues’ cause laughter, shock
Feb. 19, 2008
Surrounded by ‘The Vagina Monologues’ cast, adviser Struby Struble thanks the audience during the curtain call Saturday in Jesse Auditorium. Profits from the production benefited The Shelter and the L.E.A.D. Institute.
Production advisers Katie Blair, Jenny Dills and Struby Struble address the audience before MU’s seventh annual production of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ on Saturday in Jesse Auditorium. Forty-one students performed in the production.
Senior Lindsay Toler performs ‘The Flood’ as part of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ on Saturday at Jesse Auditorium. ‘The Flood’ detailed a woman’s reasons for suppressing her sexuality. Toler is a former staff member of The Maneater.
Production advisor Struby Struble goes over the plans for the cast’s curtain call during the dress rehearsal Saturday. Jesse Auditorium was filled nearly to capacity for the production’s one performance this year.
Seniors Martha Haddock and Kirby Moore perform 'A Six-Year-Old Was Asked...' during the dress rehearsal for 'The Vagina Monologues' on Saturday in Jesse Auditorium. The piece features an interview had with a six-year old girl who gives some humorous and unconventional answers to questions about her anatomy.
Four microphones tinted bluish purple from the stage lights stood ominously on the stage overlooking the crowd as the whir of the audience’s chatter mingled with the voices of Regina Spektor and Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis. The lights dimmed and a roar of cheers and laughter exploded from the awaiting audience.
Jesse Auditorium hosted the seventh annual MU performance of “The Vagina Monologues” on Saturday to a crowd that nearly filled the spacious auditorium to capacity. When the doors opened at 6:30 p.m., performers and crewmembers were met by hundreds of waiting viewers. The lobby of Jesse Hall was packed with a back-to-back crowd including a line of last-minute ticket buyers winding its way from one side of the lobby to the other.
“We’re so pleased the MU and Columbia community came together for the seventh year in a row to help end violence against women and girls in such a fun and celebratory way,” “The Vagina Monologues” advisor Struby Struble said.
Tables were propped up near the entryway of the auditorium where true vagina fans could purchase “vagina pops,” available in both milk chocolate and dark chocolate flavors. A Planned Parenthood table offered condoms of every color at no cost alongside bumper stickers sporting catchy sayings including “every mother is a working mother,” or “pro-child, pro-choice.”
The money raised from Saturday’s event benefited The Shelter, The L.E.A.D. Institute and MU’s Stop the Violence Fund.
The monologues were read from scripts, the women reading them serving as storytellers whose roles were to convey the messages and experiences of other women.
The performance’s brochure read, “These stories haven’t been given voices in the past but have the chance to flourish on stage tonight.”
For two hours, the evening’s storytellers performed 20 pieces that ranged from slaphappy humor to the more serious and difficult to listen to horrors of domestic abuse and genital mutilation.
Kristy Lee Watkins, a returning performer in the monologues, was one of several women who performed Saturday evening. Her speech, “The Vagina Happy Fact,” a brief piece only 30 seconds long, included a message that would make any man jealous: The clitoris is designed for pleasure and has twice as many nerve endings as the penis.
“Double your pleasure, double your fun,” she said.
Walking off the stage, Watkins was followed by hoots of laughter and cheers.
Watkins’ piece, while short, took several weeks to perfect. Finding the right words to end on, the right punch lines, the right parts to stress, was an issue she worked out during the weekly practices before the performance.
Two weeks before the performance, Watkins propped herself in a chair along the wall with four other performers during a Sunday practice. Her eyes scanned her script as she read her piece, one she said is “about the clitoris and how it is specifically designed for pleasure.”
Watkin’s piece was from Natalie Angier’s novel “Woman: An Intimate Geography,” while most pieces used in the performance were pulled from Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.”
In the past, Watkins has performed “What does your Vagina Wear and Say?” and “When I was Twelve My Mother Slapped Me.”
“I have always performed light-hearted and funny monologues, because that is what I was most comfortable performing,” Watkins said, her head bowed over her script as she read to her fellow performers, the small crowd watching quietly till she finished.
The small group was only a handful of girls, but it spoke to the diversity of the performers. An array of ages, sizes, ethnicities, majors, fashions, and interests clustered around the room.
Aside from their differences, the women have a similar thread that brought them to perform: They all want to spread a message.
“The ultimate message of the night is to give women a voice, let their stories be known and to end violence against women,” Watkins said.
“The Vagina Monologues” advisor Jenny Dills worked with the performers every week during practice.
“It was such an honor to get to work with this year’s cast to put on the production,” she said.
Kristy finished her piece and looked up, eager to receive constructive feedback from her audience. Over the next hour, each woman performed her monologue.
Some pieces were rich with humor while others provoked squirming with their brutal honesty. The word “vagina” was used abundantly and with fervor.
Watkins admitted there are people in the audience every year that complain about the number of times the word is repeated.
“They usually say that they had never heard the word vagina so many times in their life,” Watkins said. “But this is kind of the point, people should not be scared of the word vagina. It is politically and scientifically correct.”
The frequency of the word isn’t the only thing that might make an audience member squirm. One piece centers on a woman’s attempt to re-claim the term “cunt,” a word many consider offensive. The performer slowly works up her voice to the exhausted shriek of an orgasm.
The girls in Watkins’ group were blown away, despite the fact that it was the third or fourth time they had heard the piece.
“There is a wide range of monologues that are a part of this performance — monologues describing genital mutilation, periods, women experiences, some good, some bad, the different types of female orgasms, etc.,” Watkins said. “It is easy for me to say the audience experienced a whole array of emotions throughout the night.”
When Saturday finally rolled around, the women were ready to perform. They filled the first two rows of seats in the auditorium, chatting quickly and excitedly with each other as the audience took its seats.
The dress code for the performance was left open to anything the women could put together that included black and red. The end result brought several performers dressed in simple black dresses that hugged their figures. Others wore mini skirts torn between a rugged biker look and that of a Catholic schoolgirl and there was a sexy bustier with tight curve-hugging black pants.
The show went off without a hitch. The auditorium was so full that the balcony had to be opened up.
“The more people who come to see the performance, the more people learn about the cause and about women, and the more money we raise for The Shelter and The L.E.A.D. Institute,” Watkins said.
The crowd laughed hysterically after the first monologue listed off the array of terms used in reference to the vagina, among them “va-jay-jay” and “monkey box.” Other performances had the crowd rolling with laughter, such as one comparing a regular trip to the gynecologist to a Nancy Drew mystery, describing the procedure as miserable, a form of torture where the doctor sticks “cold duck lips” inside people.
“This was by far the best year since I have been performing,” Watkins said. “The women were wonderful. I think everyone performed their monologue in a very memorable way, and I think every performer should be proud of what we accomplished.”
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