Some women love them, some think they’re hideously ugly and some even like to draw pictures of them. But no matter how women feel about their vaginas, 25 women will be talking about them in Agate Hall tonight.
For 10 years, the ASUO Women’s Center has been putting on performances of “The Vagina Monologues,” Eve Ensler’s award-winning episodic play about female empowerment. Based on interviews with 200 women, the play is a series of soliloquies on vagina-centric issues including sex, love, menstruation, masturbation, mutilation, birth and rape.
“It has huge potential to help women be more open with themselves and reduce shame about anything and everything about female body image, cultural stigmas, stigma about age and just stereotypes in general,” said producer Lauren Zavrel, a University graduate student and events coordinator of the Women’s Center.
Sakti Safarti, a 2002 graduate of the University, got involved with “The Vagina Monologues” through Director Lola Broomberg, with whom she has been taking a women’s theater class.
“It was sort of one of those dream things for me,” Safarti said on participating. “I believe women should have a voice.”
Safarti, who had seen the play twice, is acting in three scenes: the introduction; “I Was There In The Room,” about a woman watching the birth of her granddaughter; and “Wear and Say,” in which the speaker ponders what her vagina would wear if it could get dressed and what it would say if it could speak.
“My whole life

, I’ve felt like an artist without a medium, and I feel like I found my medium,” Safarti said.
While the play is polarizing – “there’s always some element of controversy simply for the fact that it’s called ‘The Vagina Monologues,’” Zavrel said – Zavrel said it’s positive because it raises questions and lends itself to discussion.
“I just feel like students, at least people our age, are really willing to put their opinions and voices out,” said University freshman Molly McFadden. “I think that for this reason, (the play) is really good.”
McFadden, who is attending the performance at the suggestion of her women’s and gender studies professor, is looking forward to seeing “The Vagina Monologues” for the first time.
“I’m expecting kind of a dark comedy, I guess you would say,” McFadden said. “I’m looking forward to hearing true stories but with a comedic standpoint. I think it’s a good undertone to a fun event.”
University

junior Jared Archambeau is also excited to see the play because he’s already seen it twice and is looking forward to his favorite monologue, “Because He Liked To Look At It.”
In this scene the character, in order to cope with unattractive anatomy, would often pretend her vagina was a silk handkerchief or a cozy futon with cotton sheets. It wasn’t until she met Bob, a “connoisseur” who loved to look at vaginas, that she came to appreciate her own.
“It’s been really well-acted in the past,” Archambeau said. “That’s the one that sticks with me the most.”
As the producer, Zavrel can’t pick just one monologue she likes best, though one of her favorites is “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy,” which is about a lawyer-turned-dominatrix who loves pleasuring her fellow females.
“(University student Emily Buck) is just a very dynamic actress,” Zavrel said. “People start whooping and hollering when she’s done with their fists in the air like, ‘Hell yeah!’”
Proceeds from “The Vagina Monologues” will benefit Womenspace, Doulas Supporting Teens, Sexual Assault Support Services and Vday.org, among others. V-Day – the initial of which stands for victory, valentine and vagina – is a global movement aimed at stopping violence against women.
This will be the last year “The Vagina Monologues” is performed at the University. The script remains the same and Zavrel said that in the future – starting with Body Talk on Feb. 21 and 22 – participants will perform their own monologues.
But while “The Vagina Monologues” is still here, Archambeau thinks it’s a great event for the University.
“I think the biggest reason is women’s empowerment: Women taking back their vaginas from society and how men and people repress them for not only having vaginas, but for being female in society,” he said. “It seems like they use the vagina as a symbol for empowerment, and I think it’s awesome.”
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