'Vagina Monologues' raises vaginal awareness
Vaginas will be the talk of the town this weekend with the play "Vagina Monologues" coming to Central Michigan University for the first time in two years.
The play is a collection of monologues which cover a variety of topics such as sexual pleasure, female empowerment and sexual abuse.
Lansing senior and cast member Emily Nuss, who has never acted before, saw the play two years ago and decided to audition for this year's production.
The same script is used every year, except for the spotlight monologue, which highlights an issue faced the same year of a particular production.
Nuss will be reading the spotlight monologue, which will discuss how women were affected by the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the sexual brutality women face in the Congo.
"I've always been passionate about women's issues. 'The Vagina Monologues' is so much more than a bunch of women complaining about their vaginas," Nuss said. "It's not anything overtly sexual. The vagina is just used as a symbol for women's issues."
"The Vagina Monologues" will be held at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday. It will be shown again at 3 p.m. Sunday. Both days the play will be held in Warriner Hall's Plachta Auditorium.
The play is open to the general public and tickets are $5 for students and $8 for the community. The proceeds from ticket sales will go to Voices for Planned Parenthood, Sexual Aggression Peer Advocates and Women and Girls of Haiti.
Co-directors and Kentwood seniors Jolie Masters and Jordan Wyer starred in the play two years ago and decided to bring it back to CMU. Masters said it could not be done last year because of financial complications. Masters and Wyer both said they hope there will be productions every year going forward.
"A lot of times in the world, women are muted from talking about things that are sexual. The 'Vagina Monologues' made a way for making it okay for women to talk about issues that are often silenced," Wyer said.
The play first came into existence when New York journalist Eve Ensler interviewed hundreds of women about the experiences they've had with their vaginas. She turned the interviews into monologues, and thus "The Vagina Monologues" was born.
Masters said while guys may not want to come because of fear of being the only men in the audience, hearing the perspectives of women from women can be beneficial to them.
"The 'Vagina Monologues' shouts loud and clear, 'I'm a woman, I like sex, I like to be dirty sometimes, and that's perfectly okay,'" Masters said.
