‘The Vagina Monologues’

By Katie Deem
The Theatre Department presents The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler on Feb. 17 and 18 in the College Theatre at 8 p.m. The all-female cast presents telltale anecdotes illuminating the ins and outs of owning and managing the female anatomy. Each narrative in the play reveals the point of view of a woman or several women interviewed by the author Eve Ensler.

This is the first time the Monologues have been presented at West Virginia University at Parkersburg. Barbara Harris will direct the play, and Carson Soelberg will produce. Soelberg predicts that the Monologues may be handed over to a student director next year if the department chooses to present them again. The student director will need to have taken the directing class offered by the Theatre Department.

Until the Monologues were first published in 1996, many women chose not to refer to “down there.” The feminist movement liberated women. They finally grasped the freedom to talk about female experiences. Yet, the vagina remained a hushed mystery until women of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries began to explore the specifics of their anatomy. They analyzed the vagina, discovered how it functions, and how that functioning affects our lives.

In the play, women unleash the truth and declare that managing a vagina is no easy task. Women are frank about what they like and dislike about their vaginas, how it feels when their boundaries are violated, and what truly entices them. Producer Carson Soelberg “hopes people will feel uncomfortable and start to talk about it.”

In what will most definitely be an unforgettable evening, women will let their hair down and enjoy a night reserved especially to pay a tribute to womanhood. Perhaps men can learn the “fairer sex” does not necessarily don all pink-lace panties and white petticoats.

The Theatre Department may also present a third performance of The Vagina Monologues on Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. This performance, however, is tentative, but further information will be posted. For any more information, please contact Barbara “Buffy” Harris at 424-8229 or in Room. 0113.