'Vagina Monologues' deliver crowd-pleasing performance

02/27/09 - Last night, students packed the University of Rhode Island's Edward's Hall to see the seventh annual production of "The Vagina Monologues" that talked about topics ranging from a "lost" clitoris to "angry" vaginas.While "The Vagina Monologues" brings upon different emotions of crude hilarity and insightful sensibility, its moral importance cannot be stressed enough by director Anna Siradze.

"The message is very deep," Siradze said. "It's also empowering just for the women that are in that play. I don't want you to think of this as a theater production because by all means it's not."

The student cast come from a different variety of disciplines and majors ranging anywhere from anthropology to pharmacy.

"These women have nothing to do with theater. We're just as petrified as anybody else walking down the street on getting on stage, but we've worked so hard for this," said Siradze.

Regardless of Siradze's concerns about acting, the inexperience of the performers was not evident. The players recited lines naturally and delivered them with appropriate emotion for each scene.

The crowd was more than receptive to the effort put on stage and laughed wildly with the risqué jokes on a night when risqué and taboo didn't exist. Likewise, the crowd was hushed and sensitive to more dramatic scenes.

A business and marketing major herself, Siradze thinks that the production should not be judged merely by its acting but that the message it conveys is more significant. And while each story invokes different sentiments, all relate back to the vagina.

"It's not seen per se as an anatomical part, but more symbolic," Siradze said. "So everything that we do in the play and that you hear and see, you have to think of it on a deeper level."

"The Vagina Monologues" was written by playwright Eve Ensler in 1996 to convey violence faced by women. "And so [Ensler] noticed how women that grew up in violent societies don't feel as empowered because they are constantly oppressed whether it's through sexual assault, rape, molestation, mutilation, etc.," Siradze said.

The different stories told were aimed to reinstate a lost respect toward women and to reveal a sense of inner beauty that can be diminished by the wrongdoings of men.

"It doesn't mean that all men are bad. It doesn't mean that all men use violence toward women by any means. It's just that these particular stories had these awful things take place and it was a result of men in their society," Siradze said.

One skit titled "Because He Liked to Look At It" focused on a woman played by Courtney Malloy who saw her physical self in a negative light until she met "vagina connoisseur" Bob, played by the lone male cast member, Nicholas O'Brien. "I began to see myself the way he saw me," she said. "I began to feel beautiful."

Another skit, "The Flood", acted by Erica Snape, was centered on a 72-year-old woman that never spoke about herself in a sexual manner. "You're the first person I've ever told about this. You know, I feel a little better," she said.

Some stories spoke about women from other countries, including Bagdad and Islamabad. "This doesn't apply just to the U.S. This applies to all of the world," Siradze said.

In "The Memory of Her Face", MacKenzie Harrington, Sarah Martone and Marianne Lizotte told stories of women that were beaten, burned with acid and killed.

Ninety percent of the proceeds made will be given to the URI Peer Advocates, an organization of students trained to educate students on topics such as sexual assault, stalking and dating violence, among other topics. Ten percent will be given to the V-Day organization founded by Ensler. V-Day, which stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina, was created in an effort to end sexual violence.