Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues Are Now on Chisinau Stage
10/07/2007
Submitted by
Information Centre "GenderDoc-M"
On April 27-29 of this year, Chisinau saw the VI Pride of Gays and Lesbians of Moldova “Rainbow over the Nistru”. The program of the festival was rich in many interesting events. A particular interest of Chisinau audience, Pride participants and guests was aroused by the performance staged on the basis of a play by Eve Ensler, Vagina Monologues. Its premiere took place on April 28 of this year. The famous critic Elena Satohina has seen the performance on stage at the House of Nationalities and has written a feature in the newspaper “Novoe Vremea” (New Times).
SPEAKING ORGAN or “THE BARE TRUTH”
Moldova has come closer to Europe indeed: one realizes it at such unusual events that break the quiet life of patriarchal Chisinau as theatre performances that have caused a great sensation even on far more civilized stages. In such a way, last Saturday, in the presence of a huge gathering of people at the House of Nationalities, the premiere of the most sensational play of the last decade – Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler – took place. By the way, the playwright is the closest friend of Hilary Clinton herself, who supports her work heartily and publicly.
The sensational play by Eve Ensler is the product of processing more than two hundred interviews. “The bare truth” vents a storm of revelations on a delicate topic. However, according to a theatre-goer, the author’s will paves the hard bed for these dusty waters of humility and despair, taking the Vagina Monologues from the ghetto of Psychology and Gynaecology to the Arcadia of pure art free of wild feminism. That is why Western versions featured such Hollywood stars and famous drama performers as Winona Ryder, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Salma Hayek, Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Close, and Susan Sarandon.
Eve Ensler is not only a writer, but also an activist of the women’s movement. She has made the Vagina Monologues the ideological base of the V-Day movement established by her in 2001. The mission of the movement is to prevent violence against women and to assist those who have suffered from it. «V» in the name of the movement refers to three notions at the same time – Victory, Valentine, and the main character of the play. The writer is the winner of Guggenheim and Berilla Kerr Prizes in Playwriting, as well as a number of American National and independent awards for performance, drama, and active public work. Now the play has been translated into more than 30 languages, the show is successful in different cities of 53 countries of the world. The Russian translation of the Vagina Monologues has been done by a famous TV journalist Vasily Arkanov, who lives and works in the USA.
Revelations or Provocation?
The world stages have already applauded the play and its staging from New-York to Moscow. Now, it seems that our time has come. Of course, indisputably, such performances are not for children, but for adults who have known not only the Paradise, but also the Hell of the so-called sexual life, who know that the life is complex and not limited to the former or the latter, in a word, it is for those who can distinguish art from pornography. By the way, the latter is for some reason accessible to children on TV starting from around 11 p.m., and there is no need to hack some kind of a secret code. And this does not embarrass anyone; our Parliament keeps silence, while even in the USA such programs are broadcasted only with a special access even at night.
But let us get back to our sinful earth. The Assembly Hall of the House of Nationalities was packed full not only by the participants and guests of the Pride of Gays and Lesbians of Moldova “Rainbow over the Nistru”, but also theatre-goers, producers, actors, students, journalists. The audience was quite diverse, had heard about the sensational play and was eager to see how the young producer Nelly Cozaru, who had been known to Chisinau public as an actress rather than an imperious and serious producer, was going to cope with this difficult and certainly provocative task. (We are a total failure as far as women-producers are concerned by the way, if anybody is interested. There are simply none, so Cozaru is by all means a real pioneer.)
So, we have taken our places and are waiting! To say that the theatre critics are worried about dirty tricks, mistakes, inaccuracies, obscenity at such premieres themselves is to say nothing. I was shaking in my shoes: will I have to drop my eyes in embarrassment? And then desperately wiggle out in my review in order not to offend all the gays and lesbians? After all, certain of our actors and producers manage to be obscene, ambiguous and unscrupulous in playing or staging far more innocent stuff, and then narrow-mindedness, claustrophobia, traditional boorish and consumer attitude towards women, this “patriarchal nature” of ours is coming out like grass after rain.
Nevertheless, I would like to say straight away: in just a couple of minutes I had to sigh with relief – they did it! The dangerous topic was saved by Art. (GenderDoc-M Information Centre can have a big fat score for that.) Why? Because the art has many facets, it is multidimensional, volumetric, and spiritual. It can save any topic you can imagine. It expands all the boundaries and removes all the limitations. And the five young actresses – Dana Ciobanu, Daniela Burlaca, Irena Boclinca, Veronica Bivol, Lidia Raicu – the class of the producer Nelly Cozaru at the Academy of Arts – were so sincere in their emotional splashes and so upright, witty, ironical, lacking clichés of the actor “specials”, that the audience would burst into laughter, explode in a storm of applause, and even shout “Bravo!” And it went right on for 90 intense minutes, having forgotten about the provocative nature of the obvious “bare confession” and having forgiven the inmost word “vagina”.
And, you know, there is walking on the razor’s edge at the basis of the performance. The young ladies on stage, boldly, so to say, were telling (even crying out!) about their intimate experience. That is, about their bedroom stories, the bitter intimacy between a woman and a man, cruelty and violence, indifference and spite, criminal carelessness towards woman’s feelings, about sexual relations in general, and in the name of “whom”! On behalf of the very main character, that inmost place that one would not like to mention at all in order not to give rise to frivolous analogies and to crumple the topic. But neither me, nor the other spectators felt like fidgeting in embarrassment or grunting bashfully in the handkerchief.
It was not physiology that was screaming on stage, it was wounded soul crying. It was human solitude and pain. One could as well cry and weep. We were proven once again – though in the most shocking and bold manner – that the experience of unsafe and safe sexual contacts is first of all human relations. Moreover, the human essence is reflected in intimacy like in a mirror. Either it is a human or an animal. Didn’t you know that? And it restrains the provocative nature of the performance: the naturalist character is replaced by psychology, accident by typology. The world is ruled by love, not by lust. So, when in the end they show a documentary – child birth – the events of the private life of an “important female organ” are even raised to an inconceivable emotional height. As if the producer was saying: this place is not an empty object, and not some comfortable place for male desire realization, no, it is not just a sexual cave. This place is mystery and enigma. It is the essence and the symbol of fertility, the life on Earth. Even more elevated words would fit here. (Not accidentally, the performance was accompanied by the pure and lofty classical audio, almost church chorale was pouring from the stage!) Call it vagina, or something else, like according to Shakespeare about the rose that smells a rose whatever you call it, it is an important part not of the physiology, but of the life itself.
One can say, regretfully or not, it is that very place that brings together disappointment and joy, pain and hope, birth and desire, dreams and death. This is what the producer Nelly Cozaru wanted to achieve saving us from ourselves. I could not say that there was no barrier to overcome in one’s soul, to make an effort and understand. I won’t pretend to be a dashing person. Personally, I had a stupefacient shock at the beginning that lasted for about ten minutes. And the rest, as I could see, felt the same until coped with it and began to perceive separately the humour, the tragedy of naive revelations and, correspondingly, to react adequately – by laughter or by tense silence. The level of bluntness of the monologues was very high. But such an experience is useful. And the very beginning of the performance was like a bucket of cold water poured on the head. It was so provocative, unexpected, and bold that a part of the audience literary grew into their chairs refusing to believe their ears and eyes, staring at the screen showing the documentary (!) of interviews with women of all ages in the streets of Chisinau. You can imagine, they were asked about impossible and grating on one’s ears stuff: What do you think about your vagina? What does it look like? What does it resemble of? What flavour of life does it have? What does it want? Etc.
Dangerous Questions
If in order to create her unusual piece, as I have already mentioned, the author of the play interviewed about two hundred women of different ages and nationalities, our producer has limited to a couple of dozens, but what dozens! There was life broadcast as they say. And that was the most amazing documentary part of the show, because deceit, naivety, sanctimony, cynicism, embarrassment, carelessness, foolishness, dreaminess, and chastity alternated in such a fanciful human cocktail that those interviews no doubt could become a valuable material for a sexopathologist. And we, the spectators, found ourselves thinking: are we aware of our desires? Do we acknowledge the value of our life? Are we responsible for our physiology? Or are we just as foolish, careless, and naive like children and are driven by our instincts?
Thus, the whole performance presented a mixture of a talented actor play, witty producer tricks, documentary, naturalist character, and an unexpected aching magic, almost anguish for ideal. This may sound strange considering the “announced topic”, but it is exactly like that.
Of course, the performance was social as well. Our women are intimidated and ignorant, they do not love and very little appreciate themselves, they receive little pleasure from sex – this is what the play is also about. So, the Vagina Monologues were industriously liberating the audience, making them face things that are not customary to talk about in public, only at the kitchen table with a drink, “pouring the soul”.
As for the most theatrical part of the play, one of the advantages was that it presented five totally different female characters. “The Shy Secretary”, “The Relaxed Rocker”, “The Aging Boa”, “The Stripper”, and “The Holder of a Grocery Basket” are all TYPES. They are easy to recognise, because we all have met them in our lives, and this is one of the main merits of the show. And even overplaying at certain points, breaking into pathetic element, becoming some Joans of Arc fighting in the name of “all the female progressive humanity”, the actresses were good because they did not loose sincerity, actor confidence in their rightfulness, and the declaiming note on the whole, which was so characteristic to the play.
Social Context
Curious enough, here and there, due to this social pathos, the whole performance looks rather “r-r-revolutionary”, “barricadely feminist”, with a certain call, a slogan “to stand up for our women’s right”, and then it returns to the course of actual Art, already operating by other categories, such as: character recognizability, types, heartfelt monologue, its emotional intensity, exactly discovered gesture, etc.
One has to admit that the staging of the play abounded in witty findings, which included music, lighting, and the economical, laconic scenography itself. In the middle of the stage, as the main decoration, there was a huge armchair – plush, red, glaring sexy at the first sight! – which, like in a fairy tale, in the course of the action turned out to be expandable the sixth multidimensional participant in the performance, faithfully attending each monologue and mise-en-scene, serving as an equal partner of the actresses.
At the beginning, the armchair-folding bed, the armchair-house, the armchair-fantasy “pretended” to be a drinking fountain. Then it became something like a bath full of tears of the next character, then an aquarium for the closed and dumb like a fish soul of “The Secretary” (by the way, one of the strongest stage moves, a 100 per cent plaid up episode). Finally, the armchair with the aid of some cunning sliding bolsters transformed in a masturbation mechanism of “The Rocker”, and in the end in a reconciling and romantic manner opened its throat for a whole bunch of flowers incarnating the dreams of a naive and pure like Eve the fifth heroine. And it exhausted its destination – telling about a lot being a single one. As a matter of fact, each actress had the same task, in no way an easier one: to tell the whole woman’s life in themselves, to splash out pain and complexes – without ceremony and limitations, dramatically, convincingly, nakedly, and inmostly.
And the performance did achieve its goal: it shook, stirred up, made laugh and yearn. But not about the sexual life, but about the ideal and harmony, and in such a way it saved the risky topic.
Elena SATOHINA
Novoe Vremea, No.17 of 4 May 2007
From the editor’s: The general sponsor of the performance was GendreDoc-M Information Centre. This non-governmental organisation has been closely cooperating and received financial assistance from the Swedish Helsinki Committee and Swedish International Development Agency, Gay and Lesbian COC Association (Netherlands), and CORDAID Foundation (Natherlands) in organising and carrying out all the activities within the annual festival of gays and lesbians of Moldova “Rainbow over the Nistru”.
SPEAKING ORGAN or “THE BARE TRUTH”
Moldova has come closer to Europe indeed: one realizes it at such unusual events that break the quiet life of patriarchal Chisinau as theatre performances that have caused a great sensation even on far more civilized stages. In such a way, last Saturday, in the presence of a huge gathering of people at the House of Nationalities, the premiere of the most sensational play of the last decade – Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler – took place. By the way, the playwright is the closest friend of Hilary Clinton herself, who supports her work heartily and publicly.
The sensational play by Eve Ensler is the product of processing more than two hundred interviews. “The bare truth” vents a storm of revelations on a delicate topic. However, according to a theatre-goer, the author’s will paves the hard bed for these dusty waters of humility and despair, taking the Vagina Monologues from the ghetto of Psychology and Gynaecology to the Arcadia of pure art free of wild feminism. That is why Western versions featured such Hollywood stars and famous drama performers as Winona Ryder, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Salma Hayek, Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Close, and Susan Sarandon.
Eve Ensler is not only a writer, but also an activist of the women’s movement. She has made the Vagina Monologues the ideological base of the V-Day movement established by her in 2001. The mission of the movement is to prevent violence against women and to assist those who have suffered from it. «V» in the name of the movement refers to three notions at the same time – Victory, Valentine, and the main character of the play. The writer is the winner of Guggenheim and Berilla Kerr Prizes in Playwriting, as well as a number of American National and independent awards for performance, drama, and active public work. Now the play has been translated into more than 30 languages, the show is successful in different cities of 53 countries of the world. The Russian translation of the Vagina Monologues has been done by a famous TV journalist Vasily Arkanov, who lives and works in the USA.
Revelations or Provocation?
The world stages have already applauded the play and its staging from New-York to Moscow. Now, it seems that our time has come. Of course, indisputably, such performances are not for children, but for adults who have known not only the Paradise, but also the Hell of the so-called sexual life, who know that the life is complex and not limited to the former or the latter, in a word, it is for those who can distinguish art from pornography. By the way, the latter is for some reason accessible to children on TV starting from around 11 p.m., and there is no need to hack some kind of a secret code. And this does not embarrass anyone; our Parliament keeps silence, while even in the USA such programs are broadcasted only with a special access even at night.
But let us get back to our sinful earth. The Assembly Hall of the House of Nationalities was packed full not only by the participants and guests of the Pride of Gays and Lesbians of Moldova “Rainbow over the Nistru”, but also theatre-goers, producers, actors, students, journalists. The audience was quite diverse, had heard about the sensational play and was eager to see how the young producer Nelly Cozaru, who had been known to Chisinau public as an actress rather than an imperious and serious producer, was going to cope with this difficult and certainly provocative task. (We are a total failure as far as women-producers are concerned by the way, if anybody is interested. There are simply none, so Cozaru is by all means a real pioneer.)
So, we have taken our places and are waiting! To say that the theatre critics are worried about dirty tricks, mistakes, inaccuracies, obscenity at such premieres themselves is to say nothing. I was shaking in my shoes: will I have to drop my eyes in embarrassment? And then desperately wiggle out in my review in order not to offend all the gays and lesbians? After all, certain of our actors and producers manage to be obscene, ambiguous and unscrupulous in playing or staging far more innocent stuff, and then narrow-mindedness, claustrophobia, traditional boorish and consumer attitude towards women, this “patriarchal nature” of ours is coming out like grass after rain.
Nevertheless, I would like to say straight away: in just a couple of minutes I had to sigh with relief – they did it! The dangerous topic was saved by Art. (GenderDoc-M Information Centre can have a big fat score for that.) Why? Because the art has many facets, it is multidimensional, volumetric, and spiritual. It can save any topic you can imagine. It expands all the boundaries and removes all the limitations. And the five young actresses – Dana Ciobanu, Daniela Burlaca, Irena Boclinca, Veronica Bivol, Lidia Raicu – the class of the producer Nelly Cozaru at the Academy of Arts – were so sincere in their emotional splashes and so upright, witty, ironical, lacking clichés of the actor “specials”, that the audience would burst into laughter, explode in a storm of applause, and even shout “Bravo!” And it went right on for 90 intense minutes, having forgotten about the provocative nature of the obvious “bare confession” and having forgiven the inmost word “vagina”.
And, you know, there is walking on the razor’s edge at the basis of the performance. The young ladies on stage, boldly, so to say, were telling (even crying out!) about their intimate experience. That is, about their bedroom stories, the bitter intimacy between a woman and a man, cruelty and violence, indifference and spite, criminal carelessness towards woman’s feelings, about sexual relations in general, and in the name of “whom”! On behalf of the very main character, that inmost place that one would not like to mention at all in order not to give rise to frivolous analogies and to crumple the topic. But neither me, nor the other spectators felt like fidgeting in embarrassment or grunting bashfully in the handkerchief.
It was not physiology that was screaming on stage, it was wounded soul crying. It was human solitude and pain. One could as well cry and weep. We were proven once again – though in the most shocking and bold manner – that the experience of unsafe and safe sexual contacts is first of all human relations. Moreover, the human essence is reflected in intimacy like in a mirror. Either it is a human or an animal. Didn’t you know that? And it restrains the provocative nature of the performance: the naturalist character is replaced by psychology, accident by typology. The world is ruled by love, not by lust. So, when in the end they show a documentary – child birth – the events of the private life of an “important female organ” are even raised to an inconceivable emotional height. As if the producer was saying: this place is not an empty object, and not some comfortable place for male desire realization, no, it is not just a sexual cave. This place is mystery and enigma. It is the essence and the symbol of fertility, the life on Earth. Even more elevated words would fit here. (Not accidentally, the performance was accompanied by the pure and lofty classical audio, almost church chorale was pouring from the stage!) Call it vagina, or something else, like according to Shakespeare about the rose that smells a rose whatever you call it, it is an important part not of the physiology, but of the life itself.
One can say, regretfully or not, it is that very place that brings together disappointment and joy, pain and hope, birth and desire, dreams and death. This is what the producer Nelly Cozaru wanted to achieve saving us from ourselves. I could not say that there was no barrier to overcome in one’s soul, to make an effort and understand. I won’t pretend to be a dashing person. Personally, I had a stupefacient shock at the beginning that lasted for about ten minutes. And the rest, as I could see, felt the same until coped with it and began to perceive separately the humour, the tragedy of naive revelations and, correspondingly, to react adequately – by laughter or by tense silence. The level of bluntness of the monologues was very high. But such an experience is useful. And the very beginning of the performance was like a bucket of cold water poured on the head. It was so provocative, unexpected, and bold that a part of the audience literary grew into their chairs refusing to believe their ears and eyes, staring at the screen showing the documentary (!) of interviews with women of all ages in the streets of Chisinau. You can imagine, they were asked about impossible and grating on one’s ears stuff: What do you think about your vagina? What does it look like? What does it resemble of? What flavour of life does it have? What does it want? Etc.
Dangerous Questions
If in order to create her unusual piece, as I have already mentioned, the author of the play interviewed about two hundred women of different ages and nationalities, our producer has limited to a couple of dozens, but what dozens! There was life broadcast as they say. And that was the most amazing documentary part of the show, because deceit, naivety, sanctimony, cynicism, embarrassment, carelessness, foolishness, dreaminess, and chastity alternated in such a fanciful human cocktail that those interviews no doubt could become a valuable material for a sexopathologist. And we, the spectators, found ourselves thinking: are we aware of our desires? Do we acknowledge the value of our life? Are we responsible for our physiology? Or are we just as foolish, careless, and naive like children and are driven by our instincts?
Thus, the whole performance presented a mixture of a talented actor play, witty producer tricks, documentary, naturalist character, and an unexpected aching magic, almost anguish for ideal. This may sound strange considering the “announced topic”, but it is exactly like that.
Of course, the performance was social as well. Our women are intimidated and ignorant, they do not love and very little appreciate themselves, they receive little pleasure from sex – this is what the play is also about. So, the Vagina Monologues were industriously liberating the audience, making them face things that are not customary to talk about in public, only at the kitchen table with a drink, “pouring the soul”.
As for the most theatrical part of the play, one of the advantages was that it presented five totally different female characters. “The Shy Secretary”, “The Relaxed Rocker”, “The Aging Boa”, “The Stripper”, and “The Holder of a Grocery Basket” are all TYPES. They are easy to recognise, because we all have met them in our lives, and this is one of the main merits of the show. And even overplaying at certain points, breaking into pathetic element, becoming some Joans of Arc fighting in the name of “all the female progressive humanity”, the actresses were good because they did not loose sincerity, actor confidence in their rightfulness, and the declaiming note on the whole, which was so characteristic to the play.
Social Context
Curious enough, here and there, due to this social pathos, the whole performance looks rather “r-r-revolutionary”, “barricadely feminist”, with a certain call, a slogan “to stand up for our women’s right”, and then it returns to the course of actual Art, already operating by other categories, such as: character recognizability, types, heartfelt monologue, its emotional intensity, exactly discovered gesture, etc.
One has to admit that the staging of the play abounded in witty findings, which included music, lighting, and the economical, laconic scenography itself. In the middle of the stage, as the main decoration, there was a huge armchair – plush, red, glaring sexy at the first sight! – which, like in a fairy tale, in the course of the action turned out to be expandable the sixth multidimensional participant in the performance, faithfully attending each monologue and mise-en-scene, serving as an equal partner of the actresses.
At the beginning, the armchair-folding bed, the armchair-house, the armchair-fantasy “pretended” to be a drinking fountain. Then it became something like a bath full of tears of the next character, then an aquarium for the closed and dumb like a fish soul of “The Secretary” (by the way, one of the strongest stage moves, a 100 per cent plaid up episode). Finally, the armchair with the aid of some cunning sliding bolsters transformed in a masturbation mechanism of “The Rocker”, and in the end in a reconciling and romantic manner opened its throat for a whole bunch of flowers incarnating the dreams of a naive and pure like Eve the fifth heroine. And it exhausted its destination – telling about a lot being a single one. As a matter of fact, each actress had the same task, in no way an easier one: to tell the whole woman’s life in themselves, to splash out pain and complexes – without ceremony and limitations, dramatically, convincingly, nakedly, and inmostly.
And the performance did achieve its goal: it shook, stirred up, made laugh and yearn. But not about the sexual life, but about the ideal and harmony, and in such a way it saved the risky topic.
Elena SATOHINA
Novoe Vremea, No.17 of 4 May 2007
From the editor’s: The general sponsor of the performance was GendreDoc-M Information Centre. This non-governmental organisation has been closely cooperating and received financial assistance from the Swedish Helsinki Committee and Swedish International Development Agency, Gay and Lesbian COC Association (Netherlands), and CORDAID Foundation (Natherlands) in organising and carrying out all the activities within the annual festival of gays and lesbians of Moldova “Rainbow over the Nistru”.
