Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” was a sensation, a celebration – and also taboo – when it was performed for the first time in New York City in 1996. Since then, the play has evolved from a celebration of women’s sexuality to a mission to stop violence against women.
The play inspired V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls, that raises money and awareness through benefit productions.
Boulder’s newest black box theater, Theatre O, and V-Day Boulder present three performances of “The Vagina Monologues” next week: Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. This year’s performances will benefit Boulder’s Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (SPAN), as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Audiences can see a full dramatic and comedic production of TVM, according to Josie Dembiczak, this year’s producer and veteran TVM actor and director. Typically TVM is performed with very little theatrics and the performers are women from the community, not typically actresses. This year’s performance has drawn a crowd of Boulder’s finest actresses. Also, Theatre O has only 61 seats, creating a cozy and intimate setting to capture the audience.
“Some believe our approach to this year’s show is a bit controversial,” Dembiczak says. “Some think the monologues should be simply read aloud without embellishment to convey the story or testimony. That’s fine and all, but what we’re really interested in is recreating these accounts and drawing the audience into the emotional experience that TVM really is.”
TVM has been around for nearly 15 years now and there is a huge V-Day following, according to Dembiczak. “People are beginning to anticipate what I call ‘Vagina Season,’” she says. “A group of people from all walks of life who want to support this cause. They are called ‘Vagina Warriors.’”
TVM definitely does have a huge following. This year’s performances at Theatre O are already sold out. Fortunately, MESA and University of Colorado-Boulder are also putting on performances.
Despite what you may think, TVM performances aren’t just a girl’s-night-out event. Guys are welcome, and encouraged, to come out too.
“TVM was written with the intention of addressing the things we cannot speak of. It gives the general population – men and women – a chance to understand the most intimate details of the female existence,” Dembiczak says. “It’s a bit jarring at first for both sexes, but there’s nothing better than looking out into the audience and seeing all the male Vagina Warriors.
“If you aren’t familiar with TVM, you must know that you will be hearing vagina jargon and euphemisms you have never even imagined before. Or maybe you have,” Dembiczak adds. “You will be hearing the expletive-filled rants of ‘Angry Vagina,’ the gory and heartbreaking details of vaginas that were raped and tortured, the tear-jerking account of a vagina giving birth.
“If it happens to a vagina, we talk about it.”
Each year, TVM is performed as part of the V-Day campaign. In the past, V-Day Boulder has raised money for Moving to End Sexual Assault (MESA) and Sexual Health and AIDS Prevention Education (SHAPE). This year, V-Day Boulder chose SPAN, our local safe house.
“It’s where women and their children go when they have no place else to go or are experience violence in the home,” Dembiczak says. “This year, a majority of the money we raise will go to SPAN. The rest will go to V-Day who will be using it to create resources for women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo who have experienced rape, torture and other types of unimaginable assault.”
In 2007, more than 3,000 V-Day events took place throughout the country and around the world. The V-Day movement has raised more than $50 million and educated millions of people about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it, as well as funded more than 5,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses around the world.
This year, proceeds are also going to women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Even though the war is over in the Congo, women and girls are still targeted and raped. V-Day funds will go to Congolese survivors of sexual violence, as well as the people who are demanding justice and an end to rape.
