The feminine presence grows ever larger at Stevens with each passing year, and that fact was exemplified on February 27th in Debaun Auditorium during the 13th annual reading of the Vagina Monologues, written by Eve Ensler and presented by the Women’s Fencing team in collaboration with other students, faculty, and the College of Arts and Letters.
The Vagina Monologues, as the name implies, is a series of biographical snippets that describe the experiences of women who have dealt with sexual harassment, experimentation, first loves, and all sorts of pivotal life events that send one’s hormones aflutter.
The performance was intertwined with comedic relief and hard-hitting truth, a factor that kept the audience paying very close attention to the messages behind the costumes and smiles.
The women who performed donned red and black garb with binders to match, united under the guise of womanhood.
As the stage lights pooled about their feet, the faces of the readers were darkened; the mild ambiguity of each woman’s identity must have served as a motif: that these occurrences can happen to any woman, regardless of her age or stature.
And each story was truly volatile: the diversity of settings demonstrated the permeability of injustice towards women throughout our society. The group of women before me on stage showed the way the female gender is disadvantaged in Western society through the tales of tumescence, grief, inequality, and emotional exhaustion.
Some of the stories were so unnerving that it seemed a miracle the original characters of the stories were able to live to tell the tale. Each monologue caused empathy to sink into each seat, and the contagion of emotions in turn caused uproarious responses from the audience.
Even though the readers were not professional performers, each woman was eloquent throughout her reading, leaving the audience stunned with the reality and impressed with the dramatization.
The somberness of each monologue was intertwined with light humor, keeping true to the manner in which a real victim might reenact her background.
As is common in dramatic readings, there were moments of discomfort (i.e. when the reality of gender discrimination smacks you in the face). Nevertheless, the performance was genuinely enjoyable: indeed, it was exemplary of nonfictional theater.
As an incentive for attendance, a raffle was held near the end of the performance, including prizes of Stevens Athletics apparel, a fancy Italian dinner for two, and, in the spirit of sexual liberty, an electronic phallus as the coveted grand prize.
Like many renditions of the past, last Thursday’s performance in Debaun served as part of the V-Day movement, a global initiative to end violence against women and girls for good. Proceeds from the Stevens production of the Vagina Monologues were donated towards Women Rising, a charity organization that provides shelter and psychological support for victims of LGBTQ+ intolerance and domestic violence throughout the United States.
Overall, it was an honor to find the time to attend the Vagina Monologues this year. An hour and a half in the auditorium easily gleaned insight to a long tumultuous history of the female sexual experience and the consequent uprising against corruption. However long they practiced, the women of Stevens performing that night did a fantastic job, and did great justice to this revolutionary work of art.
Remember, this is an annual event, and is surely an eye-opener for students of all genders.
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