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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
"The Vagina Monologues" writer Eve Ensler on laughter, desire and reentering her own nether regions.
Apr 19, 2000 | "'Vagina.' Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say." That's Eve Ensler in the prologue to her immensely popular play "The Vagina Monologues," which began as a one-woman show performed by Ensler off-off-Broadway four years ago. The play is currently in production off-Broadway, with rotating three-woman casts. Alanis Morissette, Julie Kavner and Marlo Thomas were recent performers; Claire Danes is among those onstage now.
The play condenses 200 interviews Ensler conducted with women about their vaginas into a series of character-driven monologues. The research process transformed Ensler from a woman who hesitated to say the word "vagina" to a performer who said it 128 times per show. Ensler has taken advantage of the play's success, using it as a political vehicle and in fund-raisers for international women's charities. "V-Day" benefits, staged by celebrity actors on Feb. 14 for the last three years, have routinely sold out; one show in Los Angeles alone raised approximately $250,000. Meanwhile, college students across the country are eagerly staging the show, and HBO will tape Ensler performing it in August.
I recently met Ensler for breakfast at City Bakery in New York, days before she left on a four-month worldwide trip to research her next project. I found her confident and hugely enthusiastic, amazed and overjoyed about recent self-discoveries -- physical and emotional. "Through the course of doing the show," Ensler said at one point in our interview, "I feel like I've reentered my vagina. And that has completely changed my life."
The New York Times said that many people think of you as "the Messiah heralding the second wave of feminism."
[Laughing] Yes. I call myself "messiah" every day, and I'm making everyone refer to me as that.
How do you feel, hearing that kind of thing?
I try not to think about what people think of me. You can't, because then you get hung up in all the people who love, you, and you've also got all the people who hate you, because of what you're doing. What I feel excited about is the work. And I feel that with "Vagina Monologues" and V-Day, we are, in fact, creating a huge movement. And if I have contributed to that in any small way, it is my deepest privilege and honor.
I really want to help stop violence toward women. I feel I'm here to do that, to work on making that happen. I think that anytime you get clear about what your mission is or what your focus wants to be, things start to come together in your life. Lack of clarity -- which I think plagues women particularly, so much of our lives -- to me is very connected to lack of desire. We don't get to understand what our desires are. Doing "The Vagina Monologues" was, for me, reconnecting to my desire, allowing myself to know what I wanted. That just made me so happy. And then to get to actually do it -- to have the clarity, to know my desire and then to get to manifest it -- you know, life doesn't get better.
Humor feels very important in the show. What role do you think it plays?
When people are laughing, they process things in ways they're not conscious of. And a lot of times, places where they're closed up, where they have a limited way of thinking, open up. So I really believe in laughter. There is enormous community that happens around it. When I was younger, I was more didactic and more polemical. I was insecure, and I didn't really believe that my message would come through. And now, after writing for a long time, I have more of a security that what I'm saying will be heard, and I don't have to beat people over the head with it.
When did you feel like you wanted to create "The Vagina Monologues"? Was there any sort of an epiphany?
It was all very accidental. I just stumbled upon questions and started asking people casually, and before I knew it, I was down the vagina trail. I don't think I consciously set out to do this. I mean, who would have done that? It would have been such a weird thing to do. It was more that it took me. And I have to tell you, I feel the last five years I have been hostage, in a very good way, to this thing. When I did it off-Broadway for months and months, I really felt like my job was to keep my body in shape -- that it was a much bigger thing than me and that I just had to stay in shape, but it didn't really have a lot to do with me, ironically.
The intro to the show mentions the difficulty of saying "vagina." I had to laugh because, going to the theater, I had this very courtly, polite cabdriver. I told him where I was going, which theater, and he asked what was playing, and I couldn't tell him. I said it was a one-woman show, and he said, "Oh, really, it's called "One-Woman Show"? But I felt like I would horrify him if I said it, and I just couldn't.
[Nodding] At the beginning of this, it was like, "What am I doing?" But I don't have issues with vaginas anymore.
Has writing or doing the show changed how you feel about your body?
It's completely changed that. I think when I began doing the show, I was completely disengaged from my vagina, disconnected. I lived in my head. Now I feel right with myself. I'm in my body, and I really like it in there, and it's the motor of my life. You know, before, I was kind of living -- I was hanging onto the car door, and a lot of times it was throwing me off. And now I feel like I'm in the car, and it's my car, and I determine where it goes. And that's the best thing that's ever happened in my life. As I said to you at the beginning, I know what I desire. I don't feel apologetic. When you feel insecure, you either beg people to let you in or you demand to be let in. But when you are in your body, you just know that you're in. You don't ask permission, and you don't hurt people.
It's a long journey. You have to do a lot of work, particularly if you've been raped or violated, because the degree to which you are disassociated and leave yourself is profound, and it takes a long time to come back. But you can come back, and that's the good thing.
I think a lot of times, what we're told is that if we've been raped or violated, we'll never come back. Sex will never be good again; we'll never feel good again. I think that you can fully recover; you can totally get your body back; you can totally get your sexuality back. You just have to do work, and you have to go through fire. And then, when it's over, it's over, and you move on. But you have to make a decision, too, not to live as a victim anymore, and not to see yourself as a victim, and not to be treated as a victim. And that's a huge thing to give up. Huge.
That mind-set can take so many forms: anger, fear, guardedness.
Mm-hmm. And also, there are all of the people you've gotten to take care of you on some level or another because you are a victim. There's the fear of not being taken care of if you stop being a victim. You know what? People don't take care of you when you're not a victim. [Laughing] They don't. Things change. But that's OK. You take care of yourself.
