Been There, Done That: Paving the Way for The Vagina Monologues

Abstract

In her foreword to the "V-Day Edition" of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Gloria Steinem writes of her initial reaction to seeing Ensler's performance: "I already know this: it's the journey of truth telling we've been on for the past three decades". I shared that reaction as a spectator of the monologues, performed as part of the V-Day College Campaign on university campuses for the past three years, and when I sat in a US$55 seat to watch a professional production in Chicago in 2001. The four performances had only the text in common, but audience reactions were very much the same. The standing ovations, the whistles and yells, and the jubilant atmospheres left me wondering about this newly discovered need to jointly celebrate womanhood. What may initially appear as old-fashioned and redundant to those familiar with feminism's theatrical history in the U.S. strikes many in the general publicas outrageous and innovative, and they can't get enough. Why is such a need still present in these postfeminist days? and What does it signify that the need is being met through theatre (another old-fashioned notion for some)? If, indeed, The Vagina Monologues is merely echoing what early feminist consciousness- raising groups were teaching in the seventies, why has it now become a political sensation unparalleled in American feminist theatre?