Vagina. Just saying the word in public seems taboo. But the Cast and Production teams of UCI’s own 2011 production of The Vagina Monologues, have been shouting it loud and proud for the past two weeks as they tabled on Humanities Ring and in front of the campus Starbucks, both promoting the play and generating awareness of V-Day. This is just one way that the students behind this year’s production are breaking down walls of silence to shed light on issues that are worth speaking out about.
The Vagina Monologues was originally written by Eve Ensler who herself was a victim of physical and sexual assault as a child. The first step that Ensler took in creating Monologues was conducting interviews with women about their personal stories and experiences relating to their vaginas.
Topics include: love, periods, hair, female genital mutilation, and rape among many others. She used these stories that she collected from 200 women and in 1996 compiled them into The Vagina Monologues. Since then the script has been revised several times. Originally Ensler performed all of the monologues herself; this grew to three actresses taking turns performing and now many productions cast a different actress for each monologue. The play opened in New York City at HERE Arts Center in October of 1996 and has since been performed in numerous venues internationally.
Eve Ensler, along with other advocates of the prevention of violence against women, launched V-Day in 1998. UCI’s Vagina Monologues website describes V-Day as “a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop worldwide violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sexual slavery.” UCI’s own V-Day was started in 2003 and has continued to evolve and grow since then, generating over $90,000 to support various anti-violence organizations. This year’s V-Day Spotlight Campaign focuses on the Women and Girls of Haiti. After the havoc that was wreaked on Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake, sexual violence against Haitian women and girls has increased significantly. The V-Day website cites a report from Refugees International stating that “cases of rape and abortions performed on children as young as 10 years old have tripled in Haiti since January.” This year’s campaign aims to raise awareness about the situation and raise enough funds to institute three safe houses and four legal assistance offices in Haiti.
V-Day at UCI runs in conjunction with the Campus Assault Resource and Education Center (CARE) and all proceeds go to supporting CARE as well as the V-Day spotlight organization. Carly Lanning is a third-year Literary Journalism and English double major and is a member of The Vagina Monologues Production team, helping with publicity, marketing, and the set, as well as this year’s CARE liaison. She has been involved in production since her second-year at UCI, but she fell in love with the play after attending a performance as a freshman. The play itself makes a profound impact on its viewers and, in Carly’s experience, so does being involved behind the scenes. She says, “I felt like I had been part of this group and that I have the support of the women that I met there. I was really inspired by them.” What Carly really loves about the production is how it is able to reach so many people on a personal level, “I think it’s very neat that it allows an unbiased space to talk about these issues. Although everyone might not be a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault, so many girls, every girl, will go through an experience of feeling pressured about something or feeling insecure about themselves because of other people. This production empowers women to love themselves.” On top of daily five-hour rehearsals, Carly still has to manage her academic workload, essays, homework, and maybe even get some sleep in. But for her the craziness is all worth it. She says, “It’s addicting to be involved in a cause that you’re very passionate about, and it’s so important for both men and women to be involved in this.” When all is said and done Carly’s passion lies in her desire to see change in sexual assault awareness. With her involvement in UCI’s V-Day and the production of The Vagina Monologues, there is no question that she is a part of that change.