Vagina Monologues are London-bound

Eve Ensler’s award-winning one-woman play The Vagina Monologues, originally seen at Off-Off Broadway’s HERE in the 1996/97 season where it won an Obie Award and received a Drama Desk nomination, will open at theThe King’s Head Theatre from January 26, 1999 for a six week season, closing on March 6.

The show, subtitled ‘An Anthropological Exploration’, reveals a series of different women’s stories and experiences involving their genitalia. The piece was born when playwright Ensler realized that her work, mostly about women, was missing a physiological connection. Ensler has previously told PBOL,’I couldn’t be thinking about liberating women without thinking about vaginas. I wanted to know about what women were feeling about their vaginas. As I talked to women, I was so awed and amazed by what people were telling me that I began to think, ‘there’s a theatre piece here.” As a result of hundreds of interviews with women who talked freely and in detail about their lives, she wrote this play.

She added, ‘The reaction to it has been really positive and not in a typical way. People have responded personally to it. They examine issues. . . when I traveled we did Q&A’s afterwards, it amazed me how vulnerable people were willing to be. People have been really fantastic.’

On Valentine’s Day 1998, the show formed the centrepiece for V-Day, a gala theatrical and musical charity event to fight breast cancer which took place at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, with an all-star cast that included Winona Ryder, Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, Calista Flockhart, Kathy Najimy, Rosie Perez, Susan Sarandon, Lois Smith, Phoebe Snow, Gloria Steinem, Marisa Tomei and Lily Tomlin.

Prior to London, Ensler will perform the show at Washington DC’s Studio Theatre from November 28 to December 20.

By Mark Shenton