Eve Ensler: The Vagina Monologues

"I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don’t think about them… So I decided to talk to women about their vaginas, to do vagina interviews, which became vagina monologues. I talked with hundreds of women. I talked to old women, young women, married women, single women, lesbians, college professors, actors, corporate professionals, sex workers, African American women, Hispanic women, Asian American women, Native American women, Caucasian women, Jewish women. At first, women were reluctant to talk. They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn’t stop them."
When the American playwright, poet, activist and screenwriter Eve Ensler began performing her one-woman-show The Vagina Monologues, she couldn't have had an idea of the global success and echoes it was going to have less than 5 years later. Today, her 1997 Obie Award winning play is one of the most talked about pieces in recent theatre. It is being performed by a dream-team cast of Hollywood stars which no director could ever dream of having for a movie. The published text of the play became an absolute bestseller, and, after its American success-story, The Vagina Monologues are now going global, with performances from Jerusalem to Berlin, Athens to Zagreb and a hit run in London.
So what's all the fuss about? It began with interviews, hundreds of interviews, interviews with women of all courses of life. Eve asked them about their vagina. "There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them, like the Bermuda triangle. Nobody ever reports back from there."
She edited the interviews and compiled them into a monologue. Eve calls The Vagina Monologues "theatrical anthropology". She gives voice to a chorus of lusty, outrageous, poignant, brave, highly original and thoroughly human stories. It's a combination of drama and comedy. The play brazenly explores the humour, power, pain, wisdom, outrage, mystery and excitement hidden in vaginas. Although at moments it's deeply disturbing (such as the section on the Bosnian rape victims), the real strength of The Vagina Monologues is humour.
And that's precisely the power of Ensler's work: through her provocative, funny, and hilarious "all you always wanted to say about your vagina, but never dared to" she draws attention to a serious cause.
Frustrated by the fact that "in our enlightened age, we allow rape, domestic violence, cultural and political violence to be part of our society", Eve Ensler called together a group of diverse women from the arts, the media, the women’s movement and corporate America to form the V-DAY Committee.  Determined that the best way to raise consciousness to stop violence against women (and money for existing NGO's dealing with these issues) is through provocative theatre featuring well-known talent that would excite the mainstream media, these women decided to organise throughout the US benefit readings of the Vagina Monologues on Valentine's Day (V-Day). The strategy worked and is continuing to work. On hundreds of stages, stars such as Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett, Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie Perez, Kate Winslett, Melanie Griffith, or Brooke Shields have appeared on stage to lend their talent to the cause. Currently, the V-Day Committee is preparing V-Day 2001, an event that "will rock Madison Square Garden with Eve Ensler's newest work, Points of Reentry, and music from women around the world".
The City of Women festival has invited, and is proud to present the Rumanian born, now Paris-based, cult and "cinema-d'auteurs" actress Elina Löwensohn.
Having heard The Vagina Monologues, no one – woman or man – will ever look at the world in the same way again.

Production and organisation Mesto žensk/ City of Women
In cooperation with Slovenska kinoteka
Sponsored by Adria Airways

No tickets will be sold for the reading of The Vagina Monologues. Your financial contribution of minimum 1000 SIT will be donated to the Slovene Association Against Sexual Abuse.