The Vagina Monologues (8 page)

extraordinary number of inquiries from my contacts asking when they could start to work on the following year’s program: We found out about V-Day just about four weeks ago but were able to pull together a performance in that short time. Our drama department wasn’t interested in participating, so we recruited anyone who wanted to read: We had professors, a few women from the surrounding community,

sculpture majors, women’s studies majors, law students. I have to say I am truly in awe of these women.

They all did an absolutely wonderful job. We were laughing and crying, some gave me goosebumps listening to them. We had just under 200 people show up and every one of them was blown away. I don’t think they knew what to expect but after the show there were so many people coming up to me saying they wished they had brought this person or that person, that more people needed to hear the message. I just can’t say enough. We’ve received so much positive feedback already. We had a really diverse audience and they were so receptive and supportive, it was just a great feeling all around, and I’m sad it’s over! But we all can’t wait until next year! I need to sleep for about a week, then I’m ready to start planning again! Karen, just say the word! —Michele, Northern Illinois University College of Law, February 19, 1999 We realized we would have to do another year of the College Initiative. So we did.

Three things distinguished the V-Day 2000 College Initiative from its predecessor: sponsors, the Empowerment Workshop, and worldwide penetration. After sponsoring a small but significant event in

1999, the basis for a layout in its February issue, Self magazine decided to sponsor the entire 2000

Initiative. Planned Parenthood Federation of America came on board as the primary sponsor of the 2000

Initiative’s special event—the Empowerment Workshop. On November 6, 1999, students from a hundred of the participating schools came to New York to attend a workshop led by Eve.

Eve taught the

students how to mount a production of The Vagina Monologues at their schools, and then they went to see her perform the play at the Westside Theatre. Students spent the weekend immersed in V-Day events, cultivating friendships with their fellow College Initiative participants. In feedback after their local V-Day events, many who had come to New York highlighted the Empowerment Workshop as one of

their favorite Initiative experiences. While the V-Day 1999 College Initiative participants were from the United States and Canada, some of the participants in 2000 came from other parts of the world, considerably expanding V-Day’s reach. One hundred and fifty schools joined us, from San Francisco State University in California and Cornish College of the Arts in Washington State to Oxford University in England and Friedrich Schiller Universit.t in Germany. Based on figures reported by the participating schools, it is estimated that about 65,000 people attended V-Day 2000 College Initiative events and that, through these events and the associated publicity, more than 15 million people were introduced to The Vagina Monologues and V-Day around the world. When the figures from both College Initiatives are added to those of people who have celebrated V-Day through celebrity benefit performances of The

Vagina Monologues worldwide, the total number of people who have been touched by VDay in the three years since its launch is simply unimaginable. Once again, Initiative participants clamored for a repeat performance. So I will be directing the program for the third year in 2001. While most of the people who volunteer to coordinate the College Initiative at their schools are college-age women, there are also some men, some professors, some campus theater directors. Some are feminists and some are just regular folks with no previously embraced causes. For various reasons, all see the merit of bringing V-Day to their communities. And despite the fact that all participating schools mount performances of the same piece—The Vagina Monologues—each event is unique. Some are intimate staged readings. Others are extravagant theatrical and social happenings. Many schools offer additional activities, information, and resources in conjunction with their events. There are “Vagina Dialogues” following performances. There are sexual-assault counselors on site. There are fund-raisers and parties. There is music and art and dance. Arizona State University constructed a forty-foot inflatable vagina to surround the entrance of its venue; the Rochester Institute of Technology did its production simultaneously in English and American Sign Language; Washington University in St. Louis displayed the Clothesline Project in conjunction with its event (the Clothesline Project, started in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in October 1990, works to stop violence against women by encouraging women who have experienced abuse to tell their stories on T-shirts that are then hung on a clothesline—society’s dirty laundry for all to see); a “Feminist InfoFest”

ran alongside Middlebury’s performance; the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, offered a raffle (with prizes from local restaurants, massage wellness clinics and salons, artwork donated by local artists, and a free annual exam from its local chapter of Planned Parenthood) and an information/activist booth

sponsored by the Women’s Studies Association in the student union; the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, had a “V-Day Wall” set piece—a collage of the history of V-Day, with images of the cast, words, and valentine hearts. As these examples illustrate, the College Initiative events are as varied as the people who produce them. Although the College Initiative was originally conceived to spread the V-Day message to a larger, grassroots audience, three other important outcomes have materialized in the course

of the project. First, for many of the young women and men who choose to participate, it is one of the biggest and most demanding projects they have ever undertaken. There are basic challenges, such as

securing a venue for the production, locating funding and sponsorship, holding auditions and selecting a cast, assembling a production team, publicizing the event, pursuing press coverage, rehearsing, selecting beneficiary organizations, and presenting the actual event, all the while juggling the daily responsibilities of being a student. Less common but often more difficult challenges have arisen at many of the schools.

These ranged from event posters being defaced to actresses and funders pulling out at the last minute to threatened job stability, departmental dismantling and event disruption, and even hostile state legislative action. Arizona State University’s V-Day 1999 production of The Vagina Monologues was cited by House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education chairperson Linda Gray as one of the reasons she had submitted a proposal to eliminate $1.6 million in funding for the women’s studies programs at three Arizona universities. Ms. Gray subsequently withdrew her proposal. At Washington University in St.

Louis during the 2000 Initiative, a group of fraternity members posted antagonistic flyers and threatened to disrupt the V-Day event. But the student director turned an intimidating and potentially destructive situation into a positive and constructive one: She invited the men to her production, where they watched in rapt attention. Apologizing to her after the show, they confessed that they hadn’t realized the severity of the problem of violence against women. Like this student, many participants were triumphant in the face of adversity. Despite (or perhaps because of) how demanding College Initiative events can be, the extent to which so many people—particularly young women—become empowered by successfully developing

and executing their productions is staggering. Many people never have the opportunity, desire, or ability to tackle in a lifetime what (mostly) seventeen-to twenty-one-year-old women achieve in a semester.

Dear Karen,

On a personal level, the College Initiative will be the experience that I remember most from my college career. Directing The Vagina Monologues taught me more about myself than anything I have ever done.

It also reinforced my belief in the power of community, especially a strong community of women. To sit in the audience, watching my once-shy actresses laugh and moan and cry about their vaginas, and feel the power that their words had over the people surrounding me was indescribable.

—Danielle, Colorado State University, May 19, 2000

As Danielle’s letter expresses, many of the young women and men who participate in the College Initiative experience a heightened awareness of “the power of community, especially a strong community of women” and the need for such a community. This is the second magnificent, unanticipated outcome of

the College Initiative: The Vagina Monologues and V-Day are helping to bring a new generation to a new kind of feminism. Finally, and perhaps most important, many of the people who have come into the fold in various capacities (as contacts, actresses, helpers, or audience members) have done so with a conscious or sometimes subconscious desire to heal from personal experiences of sexual violation. Many of them have written to me of their feelings of isolation, fear, helplessness, despair, pain, and lack of self-worth, and their belief that they would never recover from their abusive experiences —until they

found The Vagina Monologues and V-Day. The play and the movement have served as vehicles for their present recovery and future survival.

Karen, I just had to respond to your e-mail and let you know that meeting you and Eve has been one of the most special and important experiences in my life to date. You give me some indication of the woman I want to be. I know I did not discuss this with you before, it’s not something I discuss often, but I have been sexually abused. This V-Day experience—being a part of this wonderful project, meeting women who have made it to adulthood as strong, intelligent, together, interesting, as well as interacting with peers of mine who have given thought to the same issues I have and are willing to work to prevent what happened to myself and countless other young women from happening again—has reminded me what I lost in my rush to recover: I lost my body and now I know I will get it back. With energy, —Anonymous student, October 21, 1998 Directing the V-Day College Initiative has been much more demanding and rewarding than I ever expected it to be. For two years, I have received twenty-five to seventy-five e-mails a day regarding the Initiative. I have responded to all of them. And that has been only a fraction of my daily responsibilities. I have never given myself more fully to any project in my life.

There have been days when I would be in my twelfth exhausting hour at the computer and I would ask myself again, “Why V-Day?” and then I’d get a letter from one of the Initiative participants and, again, the answer was clear. Some of these letters follow, but there are hundreds more like them from people all over the world of all backgrounds and ethnicities who have found, through The Vagina Monologues and V-Day, new ways of thinking and talking about their concerns, discovering their own potential, helping others, healing themselves. I am certain, when you read these letters, that you’ll know “Why V-Day?”

too.

The Beginning I feel (who doesn’t?) that V-Day is a very important cause, and I think it’s a good strategy as well. It gets people who ordinarily wouldn’t even think about women’s issues to come to the play and most of them leave with a new understanding and a lot more respect for the experiences of women in our society. It’s also empowering for the people involved, both to have the experience of using their voice to say (to 400+ people) something so meaningful and powerful, and to take active steps to make the world better, safer, and more respectful for women.

—Brian, University of Oklahoma

[To her fellow College Initiative participants]

I want you to not worry. We did this last year and are doing it again, with 8 directors, a 150-person team and 10 other V-Day-related activities (including a concert, an art show, a vulva puppet-making workshop, a zine, a lecture series and more). It is SOOO insane and hard to manage. We won’t have tryouts until November 30. We don’t have funding. So, while we may LOOK organized, things are ALWAYS insane. Every group does it by its own rules. Don’t sweat it if your approach is different.

There are pluses and minuses to each. Find what works for you. There is no ONE WAY to do this.

Don’t stress, just enjoy it—it will work out. good luck!

—Danah, Brown University

[To her fellow College Initiative participants]

We had auditions before Thanksgiving break and some 40 women tried out, which was spectacular.

We ended up casting nine and were fairly successful in reaching out to a diverse group of women as far as ethnicity, race, sexuality, age, whatever. Rehearsals have already begun and I’m so excited. As far as sponsors—all of our money is coming from on-campus groups. We are lucky enough to have an on-campus arts grant that provides easy-to-get funding for plays/concerts/etc. but I am in the process of finding funding for the other more political projects we are doing. For that money I have approached our Women’s Studies Department and am planning to approach American Studies, Sociology, African-American Studies (one of our speakers is talking about poor minority women), and any other academic department that might be considered relevant. I am also presenting a proposed budget to our on-campus community service umbrella, which will provide a couple hundred dollars for one-time projects. If you are at a university, pull from the grad schools—I am planning to approach the feminist law journal at the law school for money and for other types of support and will be checking to see if the other grad schools here have women’s groups with available funds. And, if you have a fairly liberal college, try the administration—we are approaching the Dean of Students who has a discretionary fund (although that’s a little bit of a stretch). For those of you with less on-campus funding sources, if you are involving non-student communities, see if you can get money from a local community loan fund or the education department of your local/state Planned Parenthood. Even if they can’t give you money, they may be able to refer you to someone who can. Hope that helps!