The world of mainstream media became comfortable with—or at least resigned to—public pronouncements of the word “penis” when Lorena Bobbitt famously separated her husband from his own. But the world would have to wait for Eve Ensler to stage her off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues in order for THAT word to become routine. Having witnessed friends and colleagues using the phrase “The V Monologues,” I suggest we still have a way to go.
The company at Corn Stock Winter Playhouse is doing their part by opening the current season with Ensler’s play, under the direction of Amy Wyckoff. The six-person ensemble cast took the stage in front of a predominantly, though not exclusively, female audience on opening night.
Are you worried?
Ensler and theatre companies everywhere bet that you are. But if nervousness about the word seems less of something to count on today, the cultural impact of The Vagina Monologues is the major part of the reason. It’s a sign of the maturation curve of even initially shocking events that a Peoria community theatre can produce Ensler’s play today without a ripple of controversy or provocation.
Still, the script is frank about anatomy, sexuality, criminality, and gynecology in ways that can disquiet the easily disquieted. Some playgoers may not exactly enjoy every moment of the play—there were occasional small pockets of uncomfortable silence opening night—but a premise of the project is that we may need to experience it for that very reason. The play is a collection of monologues drawn from interviews Ensler conducted with women about their sexuality and their relationships with their own bodies. Ultimately, it is about empowerment, that elusive but essential condition of female identity in a post-feminist world.
Corn Stock’s production tackles the project fearlessly and aggressively. From the opening, in which Donna Forbis, Cheri Beever, and Sarah Duffy cheerfully celebrate the vast lexicon of vagina naming, through to the end, the evening is an unabashed celebration of all things female. The monologues include exhilarating affirmations like Duffy as an enlightened woman in “The Vagina Workshop” and Forbis as a proud new grandmother in “I Was There in the Room.” Beever has her own startling highlight as “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy.” Shannon Orrill gleefully reclaims a particular word (use your imagination). And Lisa Chamberlain finds love for herself through the eyes of a man in “Because He Liked to Look at It.”
But the evening has its sobering moments, too, including Orrill as a Bosnian victim of rape in “My Vagina Was My Village” and Beever as an elderly woman whose entire sexual life was devastated by a teenage encounter in “The Flood.” Throughout the performance Emily Toohill capably and enthusiastically delivers the majority of the transition material between monologues, including the Happy Facts about vaginas. All of the ensemble performers generate tremendous appeal and commanding stage presence. If anything about the performance disappoints, it is the utter absence of women of color in the ensemble. Unfortunate, but possibly inevitable in Peoria.
Don’t be nervous, don’t be afraid. If some critics have drawn inferential parallels between Ensler’s pen and Lorena Bobbit’s knife, that is merely a sign that our culture continues to try to define women in terms of men’s interests. That alone shows us that Ensler’s play has more work to do.
The Vagina Monologues continues October 21 and 22 at Corn Stock Winter Playhouse. Call 309-676-2196 or visit
www.cornstocktheatre.com for tickets.
Posted October 18, 2011
