By Elizabeth Gerbush
Forget the red roses, Godiva chocolates and
mushy declarations of love. This past Valentine’s
Day, instead of romance, Buffalo State College celebrated
something much more unconventional: vaginas.
As one of more
than 2,500 benefit events produced in honor of V-Day
2005, Buffalo State students read selected pieces from Eve
Ensler’s critically acclaimed play, “The
Vagina Monologues.”
Ensler, with the help of a group of women
inspired by her work, formed V-Day in 1998 as a movement
designed to stop violence against females. Declaring Feb.
14 as V-Day, the organization encourages college campuses,
theatres, community centers and houses of worship around
the world to present the play in an effort to raise awareness
of –and change attitudes toward—violence against
women. The charity also produces large-scale benefits, fund-raisers
and films year-round and has already donated more than $25
million to various grassroots, national and international
organizations dedicated to bringing an end to violence against
women.
Directed by student Kathleen
Kolkmann, under the guidance of Amitra
Hodge, assistant professor of sociology and coordinator
of the women’s studies program, the play was presented
on Feb. 15 in E.H.
Butler Library.
“It changed my life,” said Kolkmann,
describing her first experience with the play, performing
a monologue in a production at Fredonia State College. “When
I transferred to Buff State, I was just like, ‘Wow,
I really need to do this [at Buffalo State College].’”
Hodge first introduced Buffalo State students
to the play when she assigned the book in her Introduction
to Sociology and Women in Society classes.
“Many students assume that it’s
just about the vagina and sex and eroticism, but after they
read the book they’re like, ‘Oh, I see the point
in terms of violence against women,’” said Hodge.
When Hodge met Kolkmann last semester, Kolkmann
expressed her interest in bringing the play to Buffalo State
as a full-scale theatrical production. Unfortunately, that
didn’t happen this February, with Hodge and Kolkmann
opting to present an informal reading of the work instead.
“It was good, but I’d still like
to see it on a stage,” remarked junior Danielle Boudreau.
“Because of time and feasibility, we decided to just
go ahead and do a reading of the monologues without having
to worry about staging, production, lighting, staff and
so forth,” said Hodge. “Maybe next year we can
do something bigger!”
Attended by approximately 50 students, both
male and female, the reading featured 15 selected monologues
from the play, all based on interviews Ensler conducted
with everyday women about their experiences with sexuality.
Topics ranged from an elderly woman’s retelling of
an embarrassing arousal experience to grisly facts about
genital mutilation; from one’s experience with rape
to another’s experience with childbirth; and from
menstruation to sexual initiation. The play also answered
questions of a more lighthearted nature: What is your special
name for “it”? If “it” could wear
clothing, what would it wear? If “it” could
talk, what would it say?
Students weren’t required to memorize
the monologues, and usually read them from sheets.
“When you cite something from memory,
it’s a little bit faster,” explained Hodge.
“We want emotions to come through.”
Emotions certainly did come through, with performers and
audience members frequently being moved to tears during
accounts of widespread female suffering, such as statistics
on genital mutilation in “Not-So-Happy Fact,”
the tale of a brutal week-long gang rape committed by soldiers
in “My Vagina was my Village,” and an account
of a women’s face destroyed by acid in a domestic
violence dispute in “The Memory of Her Face”.
Listeners were also moved to laughter by
the more humorous pieces. The performances of Shayna Rachilson
as the traumatized elderly woman in “The Flood”
and Mary Salerno as a dominatrix who impersonates different
types of female orgasm in “The Woman who Loved to
Make Vaginas Happy” received particularly audible
giggles.
“Some of the girls who were performing
got really into it and you could tell that they really cared,”
Boudreau observed. “The funny ones were better than
the sad ones.”
“I was really happy with it. We had
a lot of people come out. It went off without a hitch,”
said a beaming Kolkmann post-production. “I had a
couple of girls that didn’t come, but I had some people
that just pulled through last minute. It was amazing. Vaginas
are amazing!”
Elizabeth Gerbush can be reached at gerbet47@buffalostate.edu.
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