Sensitive Show About Vaginas Provokes Laughter and Tears

Author: Yvonne Chen

We have no idea what wonders lie hidden in the people around us. Nor do we have any idea of the wonders that lie hidden in the women around us. Compelling, in addition to courageous, racy and funny, Middlebury College's recent production of Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning play, "The Vagina Monologues," attracted a fleet of spectators to the McCullough stage last Thursday, Valentine's Day. Dressed in red and black garb to commemorate those women affected by domestic violence, the cast of 17 Middlebury students scintilated and shocked the audience throughout the performance.

"I bet you're worried," one castmember abruptly burst out. "I bet you're worried about vaginas," she continued. Other members chanted "vagina" repeatedly as the audience sat in unchecked confusion.

What followed was a surge of candid monologues from the actors depicting women from all stations of life, ethnic backgrounds and ages. What did they have in common — besides you-know-what? Characters talked about a range of profoundly personal and deeply political topics that permeate the female experience.

All characters were portrayed as having faced adversity in a male-dominated system in which oppression of female sexuality governs all.

In one of the funniest, if not most revealing soliloquies, Liz Myers '04, who played a 72-year-old revealed her fear of "flooding" down in her "cellar."

"It's closed due to flooding. It's a place you don't go," the old-fashioned dame admitted.

Myers' portrayal delivered some of the performance's funniest moments as the sophomore's character described the first time she took a look at her own genitalia: "It took me an hour because I'm arthritic." Myers delivered, in a well-timed and genuine New York accent, an engaging portrayal of a woman's rediscovery of her sexuality.

Claire Wyckoff '03 'says it like it is' in another crowd-roaring and edgy account of her character's vagina. She opened with, "My vagina is angry. My vagina is pissed off. It needs to talk … about all this [expletive]!" Wyckoff's character lamented that her vagina "shuts down." "That boys, is what foreplay is. Introduce it. Engage it," her character instructed.

Her character bluntly pointed out the separation of women's vaginas from women themselves: "Stop trying to clean me up. Stop the dry-wad of cotton. Stop telling me it smells like [expletive] rose water … I want to smell the fish. That's why I ordered it." With her played down and matter-of-fact attitude, Wyckoff's character went on to complain of other forms of genital torture, denouncing thong underwear and proposing instead French ticklers. "Women would be coming all the time," her character said.

The tone changed from side-splitting to somber, however, as Seda Savas '05 divulged a testament that was full of hatred and betrayal. She played a Bosnian rape survivor, who in a poetic and moving five minutes brought to life the reality of having a "long thick rifle" shoved into her insides and "canceling [one's] heart." The offending soldiers "were the worst, the evil of no mercy. They were merciless." The trauma of torture was irreconcilable as the victim entertained a memory of having seen part of her lacerated vagina in her hand. Here, we heard the woes of womanhood and its tragedy in the face of war. The Bosnian who once treasured her womanhood like a "village" now cursed it as a "cavern of poison."

The narrator suggested that soldiers are not the only parties in war. Although "in theory women are not war," they suffer from the inherent aggression and moral breakdown that characterizes war. In practice, unlike theory, women bear little power against any form of male violence.

Some other notable performances include Marieka Peterson '04's inspirational and engaging portrayal of a female character and Maria Ostrovosky '02's "the woman who loved to make vaginas happy." In this episode Ostrovosky played a lawyer-turned-lesbian sex therapist. Ostrovosky's witty delivery celebrated women and their sexuality as she described the various moans that women are capable of. The funniest one might have been the WASP moan (Ostrovsky stood wide-eyed and speechless for this one).

Melissa Camilo '04 delivered a series of unforgetable and touching — if somewhat clichéd — outbursts in "Little Coochie Snorter that Could," in which a young urban female described her coming of age under after having been raped by a family friend, later reclaiming her sexuality with an older woman friend. There was also Kristen Connolly '02's "The Vagina Workshop," in which she portrayed an offbeat intellectual attending a workshop that advertised the "vagina wonder" and ended up discovering more than she had hoped for by educating herself on the "hidden layers" of her so-called "clam."

Underscoring these touching and outrageous were issues that were not so light-hearted. In an age in which pop culture objectifies women's bodies, rape, genital mutilation and other male-driven forms of oppression linger in the face of female empowerment. The benefit performance and celebration of domesitc violence awareness recognized the gender issues permeating women's lives. Spectators learned that somewhere in America a woman is raped every two minutes. Approximately 28 percent of victims of sexual violence are raped by their husbands or boyfriends, 35 percent by acquaintances and five percent by other relatives. The awareness continued, as everybody who expected a show about vaginas laughed and cried, but above all, hopefully left more thoughtful of the female experience.