And now for the encore. Despite what some women in Boston don’t know, “The Vagina Monologues”– a show made up entirely of women chatting about their most private part–is one of the biggest theater successes in years. Six productions of the show are now playing nationwide. It has also been performed in 31 other countries and translated into 26 languages, though it’s hard to imagine how you might say “coochi snorcher” in Korean. This week “The Vagina Monologues” breaks into dangerous new territory: television. Well, maybe only semi-dangerous. It’s on HBO, which is hardly a stranger to anatomically correct dialogue. Interestingly, HBO decided to do its film starring Ensler, as opposed to any of the A-list celebrities–Calista Flockhart, Marisa Tomei and Edie Falco, to name only a few–who’ve performed in the show over the years. “I really wanted it to be more grass-roots and reflect the women I had interviewed,” says Ensler, who also talks with some of those women in the TV version. “I think it was very brave of HBO to do it. It’s a political piece. There’s nothing scarier at this point in our culture than political work.”
All of which raises a question: how did the word “vagina” end up in NEWSWEEK? In other words, how did a piece of performance art about women’s unmentionables go mainstream? A big part of the reason is the taboo factor itself. “No one had ever talked about this before,” says Ensler, who was a little-known “downtown” writer before she created the monologues in 1996. “When women realized they had permission to scream about having a clitoris, they went crazy.” Certainly the celebrities helped, too. “Eve said, ‘Will you do this?’ And I said, ‘Oh, my God. You mean say those things in public?’ " says Tomei, one of the first to sign on. “But saying those words night after night, it works magic on you. It gets inside your skin.” Contrary to what you might think about hearing “vagina” 128 times in one evening–and that doesn’t include its unprintable synonyms–“The Vagina Monologues” isn’t at all heavy. In fact, as you listen to the story of a tax lawyer turned dominatrix or an old woman who hasn’t thought about “down there” since a teenage boyfriend humiliated her, the sexual nature of the show somehow becomes universal. And it’s a riot. “What Eve brought back to feminism was she made it fun,” says producer David Stone. “It almost sounds frivolous, but feminism became a burden, something that had to be talked about in a strident and passionate way. This is not only funny, it’s fun. That’s liberating.”
Perhaps the group that’s been most liberated by “The Vagina Monologues” has been younger women. Students at 550 colleges will soon perform the show for V-Day, a nonprofit organization that produces benefits which, combined with money generated by the show’s productions, are expected to raise $6 million this year for women’s organizations. “V-Day is an institution on colleges campuses,” says Ensler. “They literally have vagina meetings. Wesleyan has a c–t club.” A good deal of the credit for that goes to Ensler, a straight-talking New Yorker in an Anna Wintour bob. It’s no accident that she performs every show wearing a sexy black dress and no shoes. “She’s up there in bare feet, and she’s so exposed. She looks so beautiful,” says Willa Shalit, executive director of V-Day. “Young girls look at her and say, ‘That’s kind of cool. I wouldn’t mind being like that’.”
That’s not to say “The Vagina Monologues” doesn’t make some people nervous. Last year the Albany, N.Y., Times Union, a Hearst paper, refused to run a “Vagina” ad, even though Patricia Hearst herself was doing the show in New Haven. And when Donna Hanover, Rudy Giuliani’s estranged wife, performed in New York in 2000, she touched off a minor political earthquake. “I don’t think it ever stops being controversial,” says Ensler. “We’re not in a world yet where people are like, ‘vagina, vagina, vagina’.” Still, the show has broken through in a remarkable number of places. Designer Liz Claiborne has created a “V” necklace, with proceeds benefiting the V-Day charities. There was even an episode of CBS’s “Everybody Loves Raymond” where Ray’s mother makes a vagina-like sculpture in art class. “When I first did the show, CNN did a 10-minute piece and never mentioned the name,” says Ensler. “Then they did it again recently and couldn’t stop saying it.”
Now that she’s made the world safe for genitalia, Ensler is moving on. After a few performances in San Francisco, she won’t appear in “The Vagina Monologues” anymore. “The play is behind me now in what I want to say,” she says. “It feels like I’m retelling something, as opposed to saying something new.” Ensler’s next piece, “Necessary Targets,” opens in New York this week. It’s about a writer (not unlike Ensler) and a therapist who counsel women in Bosnia on overcoming the war. Despite her “Vagina” fame, it took Ensler years to get the play staged. “I said to a producer once, ‘Tell me, what’s wrong with the play?’ And he said, ‘Two words: Bosnian refugees’,” she says. After that comes an even more political piece. It’s called “The Good Body,” a sort of companion to “The Vagina Monologues” for which Ensler talked to women around the world. “I’m looking at how women fix their bodies, whether it’s liposuction or scrubbing, genital mutilation, nose jobs or vulva surgery in Beverly Hills,” she says. Vulva surgery? “It’s the funniest monologue I’ve ever written,” Ensler says. Let’s see someone do a sitcom about that.
