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February 10, 2006 > Arts & Entertainment > Monologues addresses squirm-worthy subject with simplistic straightforwardness

Monologues addresses squirm-worthy subject with simplistic straightforwardness

By Julia Bursten | Thresher Editorial Staff

Graphic imagery is often a gimmick in performance art trying to be edgy. The trend predates Shakespeare’s era and does not show signs of letting up soon. So when Eve Ensler’s 1998 play, The Vagina Monologues, debuted on Broadway, no one expected a tame two hours.

Even so, few audiences could have been prepared for the play’s sheer bluntness and significant cultural commentary.

Although Monologues has been performed at Rice before, no campus group put on the show last year. This prompted co-directors Kim Swanson, a Sid Richardson College senior, and Althea Tupper, a Hanszen College junior, to revive the performance at Rice with the help of the Women’s Resource Center. Ensler founded an international campaign to end violence against women in conjunction with Monologues’ debut, and the Women’s Resource Center joined the fight this semester.

The show begins with a brief, three-person introduction detailing the history of the sketches that follow amidst a formidable slew of slang terms for the vagina — including the Rice-specific and only questionably tasteful “Owls’ nest.” The trio explains that Ensler and a troupe of interviewers questioned women of almost every imaginable ethnic and religious background, age group and sexual orientation about, well, their vaginas.

No aspect of the female genitalia went unmentioned in the interviews, from menstruation and menopause to shapes and sizes to masturbation and orgasm. Ensler used the information to dramatize common response themes in a series of monologues from which each cast can customize its own show.

The Rice cast kicks off the evening with “Hair,” performed by Hanszen junior Becky Thilo. The monologue details a woman’s reaction when her husband requested that she shave her vagina. Thilo tells her story of psychotherapy, humiliation and razor burn very rhythmically and matter-of-factly, suspending its impact until she reaches a fermata-like pause in the script.

Thilo welcomes audiences to open their minds to the rest of the play’s evocative narrative. She has disarming posture and projection just loud enough that listeners want to lean in to hear more. Even the male members of the audience may sympathize with this universally appealing performance.

While the tone she sets remains, Thilo’s gal-on-the-street appeal fades from viewers’ minds as the stories get more shocking and the characters more stylized.

One particularly unforgettable performance — “The Flood” — comes from the evening’s only non-student narrator. Multicultural Affairs Director Cathi Clack assumes an engagingly surrealistic, upper-middle-class New England accent to polish off the character she creates. Her story relates a 72-year-old woman’s reluctance to orgasm, and Clack emphasizes the visuals in this narrative with a poise that is at once jarring and hilarious.

“The Flood” is the first scene of the night that will probably disturb squeamish audience members. While the word “vagina” alone in conversation is enough to make many college students of both genders feel awkward, the cast’s comfort with their subject matter carries most viewers safely through the earlier scenes.

But the Monologues takes a radical turn away from most comfort zones after these introductory narratives, addressing topics such as menstruation, rape and female masturbation in minute and often poetic detail. Wiess College sophomore Natalie Gwilliam tells an especially tear-jerking tale of Native American women’s subjection to sexual abuse, while Sid senior Paula Steinhauser’s “My Angry Vagina” closes the first act on a humorously aggressive, empowering note.

After intermission, the cast introduces another controversial issue: Lesbianism comes up explicitly in two monologues.

Martel College senior Sheena Barbour proves the best casting pick of the evening — she dominates the stage, enumerating the different climactic sounds women make and detailing just how to elicit them.

The graphic nature of this and each scene contrasts starkly with the minimalist set and costuming. The cast dresses almost entirely in black on a black stage floor. The only disruptions to the monochromatic scheme are the red or pink ribbons each character wears, the red velvet stool on which many of them sit and the abstract pink, red and black panels that serve as an uninspired if aesthetically pleasing attempt at scenery.

The Vagina Monologues does not exactly make lighthearted evening entertainment, and those with inhibitions about graphic discussion of the vagina may want to steer clear. But the play sends an empowering and important message to audience members of both genders. In addition to its goal of ending sexual violence, it forces viewers to confront and react to a wide variety of opinions on female sexuality, which is a noble and lofty task to undertake.

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