Brown students will produce and perform Eve Ensler's bold 1996 play "The Vagina Monologues" on campus for the first time this February, according to a student who recently obtained the performance rights.
The play, a series of anatomically aware monologues about female empowerment, is slated to be the centerpiece of a week-long series of events, according to Daniela Rodriguez Da Silva '10, the campus coordinator of V-Day 2009, a national nonprofit grassroots movement with a mission to end violence against women.
The national event organizers encourage college students to perform "The Vagina Monologues" to raise money and awareness for anti-violence groups in their communities and abroad. Last year the V-Day organization granted the rights to produce the play on Brown's campus to another student, who never performed the play. The organization told her only one student from each school could own the rights at any given time, but Rodriguez Da Silva was able to obtain the rights from the student who already held them.
The task now is following the guidelines for producing the play, Rodriguez Da Silva said. V-Day organizers ask their student contacts to provide them with detailed accounts during the months of preparation before the show goes up and once the performance is over. Not a single word from one of the monologues can be altered.
But these are just details for Rodriguez Da Silva, who said she has wanted to perform the play "since forever."
Christiana Stephenson '11, who will be an executive director of the play, said "a lot of people have come forward" to help produce the play, "which shows how primed the Brown community is for this type of dialogue."
Stephenson, a member of The Herald's business staff, said the V-Day 2009 coordinators are looking to put their own spin on "The Vagina Monologues" by asking students, both male and female, to read their own monologues on stage after the formal production.
The play's sexual themes and provocative language have earned it notoriety among both fans and detractors. The play won an Obie Award in 1996 from the Village Voice for the best new off-Broadway play, but has been the subject of censorship elsewhere.
In 2006, Providence College, which is run by the Dominican Order of the Catholic clergy, banned a student group's performance of the play. The college's president, Rev. Brian Shanley, said he prohibited the play about female sexuality and violence because the piece contradicted Roman Catholic teachings, the Associated Press reported in February of 2006.
