Is The Vagina Monologues - now arrived in Ireland - poetry for the theatre or vulgar sensationalism? Whatever the verdict, the play has helped make millions for women's shelters and rape crisis centres, writer Eve Ensler tells Arminta Wallace
"In your face" is maybe an unhappy way to describe Eve Ensler's play, The Vagina Monologues. But there it is - the body part that dare not speak its name - out front, centre stage and loving it. "Let's just start with the word 'vagina'," the script begins. "It sounds like an infection at best, maybe a medical instrument - Nurse! Nurse! Hurry up and bring me the vagina . . ." Another line compares the organ to the Bermuda Triangle. Why? "Because nobody ever reports back from there . . ."
In live performance, the series of first-person vignettes features rowdy renderings of orgasm and, at one point, encourages the audience to join in a deafening chant of "pussy", "cunt", "fanny" or whatever you're having yourself. On a more serious note, The Vagina Monologues has helped kick-start a worldwide movement to stop violence against women and to raise money for women's shelters and rape crisis centres. According to its writer, Ensler, the "V-Day" campaign - V for Valentine's Day, anti-violence and victory as well as vagina - raised close to $6 million up to the end of last year and looks set to raise between five and six more. Which, let's face it, is a lot of money for talking through your ass. But isn't it all a little, um, vulgar? Or even predictable? Julie Burchill thinks so, writing in the Guardian: "Fighting for your right to be your sex organs! Wow, I bet men are really scared by that one . . ." Germaine Greer called it "a much-hyped and fundamentally unchallenging piece of buffoonish American hoopla".
Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Kate Winslet and Susan Sarandon, all of whom have taken part at various times, beg to differ. So does Gloria Steinem, who called it "poetry for the theatre". Dublin audiences will have the opportunity to judge for themselves tomorrow night as a gala benefit performance swings into action at the Gaiety, directed by Gerard Stembridge and including among the cast Ivana Bacik, Maureen Toal, Nell McCafferty, Patricia McKenna, Deirdre O'Kane and Marion O'Dwyer. Performances have already taken place in Limerick, Galway and Cork, and 90 per cent of the proceeds will be divided between Ireland's Rape Crisis Centres and Women's Refuge Centres: the remaining 10 per cent will be sent to aid women in Afghanistan.
On the phone from London, Ensler - who wrote the play in response to a friend's horrified description of her menopausal body, then started the V-Day campaign in response to the horror stories women came up to tell her after each performance - admits to being amazed by the international phenomenon her work seems to have become. Given that she is often referred to as "the vagina woman", does she feel it has somehow hijacked her life?
"No," she says, decidedly. "I've always been an activist and I've always been a feminist - and this is a dream, when your art and your politics come together in some way. Rather than hijacked, I feel fulfilled. This V-Day, Monologues was on in 800 venues around the world, ranging from synagogues to an Anglican church in Nova Scotia to a stadium of 6,000 people in the Philippines."
The piece has been staged everywhere from Antarctica to Zaire. "They did a production for half of Antarctica, which is about 114 people," says Ensler. "All working guys who drove heavy machinery - who, actually, were protesting about it initially. And then, when they saw it, they all stood up and cried, and confessed their own abuse - that they had been abused - and gave the women Emmys." Emmys? "Yeah. They didn't realise they were for television," she explains, laughing. "But it doesn't matter."
Tears from both sexes in the audience are, apparently, a routine reaction to The Vagina Monologues. A glance at the script shows why.Alongside those jokes are some genuinely moving moments, such as the lyrical passage in which a Bosnian girl recalls how she was raped with a rifle. But the blatant use of the V-word has, predictably, caused offence and the play - though it garnered an Obie, or off-Broadway, award in the US - has not been universally praised. It has been derided as an exercise in political correctness and as demeaning to women who, its critics say, should not be defined in terms of their genitalia. Is it both - or neither? Is it theatre - or therapy? Shock value apart, the script emphasises the elasticity not just of the organ itself, but of the language used to describe it.
AS SHE follows her play across the globe, Ensler says she has acquired a whole list of alternatives to the much-maligned "vagina". "I really think we need an international renaming campaign - I mean, 'vagina' is such a bad, bad word. The one which comes up the most is 'yoni' - it's an eastern word, I believe. Gloria Steinem says young girls call it 'the power bundle', which I also quite like. The word for 'cunt' in the Philippines is 'puke' (pronounced 'pook-ay') - that's what six thousand people were chanting in Manila."
The shock therapy, says Ensler, is part of the point. But only part.
"When I was in Bulgaria last year, 100 women came from all over the Balkans to do a V-Day there; women from all these different ethnic groups who had never been together before. The way we introduced ourselves was that everybody went around and said what 'vagina' was in their culture - and it was hysterical. Nobody could say it at first. They'd stand up, and sit down, and stand up and sit down. Finally, this Roma woman, a gypsy woman, stood up and she said, 'Minja, minja' - which is just such a great word."
"I saw her again this year when I was in Macedonia and I cannot tell you - this woman has become a radical vagina activist. I mean, she's gone. Gone! In the Roma culture there's this heinous practice where, the night a woman is married - after she has been penetrated - the entire community of men come in and look at her vagina to see if she was a virgin. After the V-Day in Bulgaria this woman made a commitment that she was going to change that - so she's taking a gypsy caravan and she's going to all the gypsy villages doing the Monologues and talking about this custom. Now, to me, that's a miracle, you know?"
By raising both cash and consciousness the V-Day campaign aims, ultimately, to stop violence against women - a dream that even the most determined activist might dismiss as impossible. Ensler says she veers between optimism and pessimism on the subject.
"I live in a state of permanent duality, where I'm completely ripped apart by all the suffering I hear about, but simultaneously hopeful when I see women rise up and resist. There was this Guatemalan girl called Marsha who came to see V-Day at Madison Square Garden last year. She's 21 years old and she was being beaten by her husband. She decided that she would bring V-Day to Guatemala, so she organised first a commercial run of it, then a V-Day at the National Theatre of Guatemala. I went. It was packed with 2,000 people. And this girl stood up in front of all those people and told her story. It was one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen - and she changed Guatemala. It will never be the same. And she's 21 years old. So I see that, and I think anything's possible."