Spring Break
Empowerment and humor
by Hannah Edber
Features Editor
Theater | 3/6/07
Posted online at 10:51 PM EST on 3/5/07
As the lights dimmed, two rows of women came marching out from both sides of the stage, their boots and heels keeping the tempo of Mary Poppins' tinny suffragette anthem. The women smiled and faced the applauding audience as the music reached its drollest line: "Though we adore men individually / We agree that as a group they're rather stupid!"
So opened the Vagina Club's sixth annual staging of the Vagina Monologues, held in Shapiro Theater this past weekend. A moving collection of 17 monologues compiled by playwright Eve Ensler after interviewing thousands of women around the globe, the performance spoke to the power of these women's stories, as well as to the secrecy, shame and triumph that surrounds women's and society's perceptions of the vagina.
The performance comes a few weeks after Feb. 14, now also V-Day, which Ensler created as a worldwide movement to stop violence against women. It also precedes Vagina Week, a week of events to explore advocacy and awareness of women and their vaginas.
This year's monlogues were marked by some innovative approaches to their presentation. In the "Vagina Workshop," Yael Mazor '08 charmed the audience with a cunning British accent, sculpting her elastic face and black eyes into expressions that conveyed her alternating fear and amazement at seeing her own vagina for the first time. In the background, women spread their legs and contorted their bodies, while Mazor eyed the audience shiftily, as if to say, "Can you believe I'm here? I certainly can't!"
The show was blessed by two stand-out performances. Ashley Sauerhof '09 portrayed an elderly woman in "The Flood," speaking about her "down there" to the apparent gentle prodding of an interviewer. In a dazzling red sweater and matching lipstick, Sauerhof filled the stage with her character's humor and warmth. Christine Caruso '07 also deserved high praise for her hysterical performance of "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy." Caruso had the audience squirming and laughing in the palm of her hand as she moaned and writhed on stage, effervescently enthusiastic about the core of womanly passion: the moan.
So opened the Vagina Club's sixth annual staging of the Vagina Monologues, held in Shapiro Theater this past weekend. A moving collection of 17 monologues compiled by playwright Eve Ensler after interviewing thousands of women around the globe, the performance spoke to the power of these women's stories, as well as to the secrecy, shame and triumph that surrounds women's and society's perceptions of the vagina.
The performance comes a few weeks after Feb. 14, now also V-Day, which Ensler created as a worldwide movement to stop violence against women. It also precedes Vagina Week, a week of events to explore advocacy and awareness of women and their vaginas.
This year's monlogues were marked by some innovative approaches to their presentation. In the "Vagina Workshop," Yael Mazor '08 charmed the audience with a cunning British accent, sculpting her elastic face and black eyes into expressions that conveyed her alternating fear and amazement at seeing her own vagina for the first time. In the background, women spread their legs and contorted their bodies, while Mazor eyed the audience shiftily, as if to say, "Can you believe I'm here? I certainly can't!"
The show was blessed by two stand-out performances. Ashley Sauerhof '09 portrayed an elderly woman in "The Flood," speaking about her "down there" to the apparent gentle prodding of an interviewer. In a dazzling red sweater and matching lipstick, Sauerhof filled the stage with her character's humor and warmth. Christine Caruso '07 also deserved high praise for her hysterical performance of "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy." Caruso had the audience squirming and laughing in the palm of her hand as she moaned and writhed on stage, effervescently enthusiastic about the core of womanly passion: the moan.
Be the first to comment on this story