The Vagina Monologues: A Culture of Gender

     The twenty remaining actresses sit backstage, listening to the second to last “monologue” over the monitor. Michelle Smith stands onstage dressed in lingerie, accompanied by Jenny Sies and Amber Wilson, also in lingerie, lying on tables. To the funniest, most sexual piece of the show, the reaction of the audience was utter silence. Saturday, March 1^st, was the second, and final, running day of Eve Ensler’s 10^th annual “Vagina Monologues.” The 2 p.m. showing was the second of three showings to be held in the Bell Memorial Union Auditorium.

     Onstage, Michelle plays a tax-lawyer-cum-sex-worker who has discovered that she loves making women reach deep down to find their “power moan.” Jenny and Amber were given the task of recreating the different kinds of moans Michelle described. What bothered those of us offstage was that there was very little response from the audience - no outbursts of exclamation, hardly any laughter. This was a very humorous piece. As I sat down cross-legged on the floor, freshly returned from my performance of “My Short Skirt,” I wondered what accounted for the difference in this audience’s reactions to those of the audience from the night before.

     As it is, matinee shows stand out from evening shows in terms of energy and expectations. Matinees are in the middle of the day, meaning that people are not ending their day with this show - they’re attention may be a bit divided, thinking of the following hours, and this can cause the atmosphere to be more casual. For those of us putting on the show, the energy was off from the very beginning. Even as we crept silently onstage and properly positioned ourselves for the Introduction, we felt the lack of the neon-like buzzing which had been so prominent all during the show the night before, and there was no lively conversation coming from the other side of the curtain as we stood patiently in place.

     At the end of intermission, the director, Vanessa Ceccarelli, had informed us that the majority of this audience was male. I was thrilled. Because the Vagina Monologues are part of the Vday movement which seeks to end violence and abuse against women, we all believed that it was very important that men bear witness to the stories of various women. Of course a lot of the show would be awkward for men to sit through, what with us discussing our periods, our rapes, our physical exams at the doctor’s office, our experiences of childbirth; we had accepted the heavy presence of males as a reasonable excuse for the lack of reaction to these issues. However, when there were three women standing onstage in lingerie moaning and we still got minimal reaction, I realized how just being of a different gender can create a cultural divide: there are no shared experiences, there is no shared language, no empathy, no sense of empowerment, and, in the case of males listening to certain atrocities members of their own “culture” had committed, no sense of pride.

                        (director Vanessa Ceccarelli with the star of the show)