The vagina monologues
The Vagina Monologues (English original title: The Vagina Monologues ) is a play based on the book of the same name by the New York playwright Eve Ensler .
content
Eve Ensler has compiled a collection of episodes of monologues from around 200 interviews with various women. The descriptions range from a rape in Bosnia to the first sexual experiences of a thirteen-year-old to the stories of a woman over 70 years old. The individual monologues have different tenors, sometimes serious, poetic or humorous, and have been updated again and again.
Ensler calls her piece “an anthropological investigation” that includes the erotic fantasies of women, their passions and desires, but also disappointment, sexual abuse and violence. For Eve Ensler, violence against women is a central issue. The performances raise money for women's projects and against violence worldwide. In 1998 Eve Ensler initiated the V (agina) -DAY as a day of action against violence against women (victory over violence) , mostly on February 14th, Valentine's Day .
Productions
At the end of 1996 Eve Ensler himself first performed the piece as a solo performance at the HERE Arts Center , a small theater in New York. There it saw David Stone , a producer of major Broadway shows , who took it to an off-Broadway theater where it was played for three and a half years. The Vagina Monologues is now famous. Eve Ensler has received numerous prizes for this, including the Obie Award in 1997 . Many prominent women have appeared in various performances. Mostly at charity performances, Whoopi Goldberg , Alanis Morissette , Glenn Close , Melanie Griffith , Winona Ryder or Calista Flockhart read from the book. Brooke Shields and Andrea Martin performed The Vagina Monologues on V-Day 2001 in New York. The wife of the former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani , Donna Hanover, also wanted to appear in one piece, but then canceled at short notice due to family problems.
The German premiere took place in June 2000 at the Stuttgart State Theater , which had also promoted the German translation. Prominent actresses have been involved in various productions in Berlin since 2001, including Hannelore Elsner , Katja Riemann , Ulrike Folkerts , Esther Schweins , Iris Berben and Sonja Kirchberger . Directed by the actress Adriana Altaras . Henrike Thomsen wrote about the stage play, which was considered controversial, in a review in Der Spiegel magazine in 2000 :
“Because the monologues are so funny and emotional, it's easy to overlook their intellectual content. In doing so, they build a bridge between popular entertainment and sophisticated thinking about sexuality. The emphasis on the vagina implicitly challenges the great sex theories of Freud and Jacques Lacan . "
literature
- Eve Ensler: The vagina monologues . (Preface by Gloria Steinem .) Villard, New York 1998 ISBN 0-375-75052-5 (English)
- The Vagina Monologues , 2000 Edition Nautilus, ISBN 3-89401-345-1 (German)
- Don B. Wilmeth (Ed.): Vagina Monologues , in: The Cambridge Guide to American Theater , Cambridge University Press, second edition 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-83538-1 , p. 662
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gabrielle H. Cody (Ed.): Eve Ensler, in: The Columbia encyclopedia of modern drama: A – L, Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-231-14032-4 , pp. 419f.
- ↑ Laura Barnett : How we made: The Vagina Monologues , The Guardian February 4, 2013
- ↑ Henrike Thomsen: Vagina Monologues: Von Glumsen und Glitschen , Der Spiegel accessed on February 21, 2013