Carleton University’s Voices Against Violence club held their annual production of The Vagina Monologues on March 23-24.
The Vagina Monologues are a series of stories taken from American author Eve Ensler’s book by the same name.
The monologues are a fictional series of accounts based on more than 200 interviews that Ensler conducted with women of different races and ages about their relationship with their bodies.
The show hopes to address women’s issues, and are about sparking conversations about difficult topics in our society such as gender-based violence and sex work.
This year’s production was directed by Charlotte Januska, a third-year human rights student, and Olivia Kennedy, a fourth-year psychology student, both of whom were directing for the first time.
According to Kennedy, it’s important to have productions like The Vagina Monologues to share the nuances in the experiences of women.
“When you’re talking about women, there’s no one narrative that comes across,” she said. “It’s not always positive, and that’s why we need to address certain topics.”
“Especially domestic abuse and sexual assault because it’s not talked about—we need to shed light on it and make it a less taboo topic so that people who have survived it can come forward and feel more comfortable talking about it, share their stories, and help other people, potentially,” she added.
A key feature of the production this year were the spoken word performances, some of which were written by the performers themselves.
Marissa Mathews, a Carleton alumnus who had been involved with Voices Against Violence during her five years at Carleton, performed a poem she wrote on sex work.
“This is a piece that I wrote, and pretty much every word that I said is based either on an incident or a saying or someone talking to me,” she said. “Sex work visibility is not a thing . . . so I tried to address some of the issues that sex workers face, specifically through my example of being an escort and sexual companion.”
“I also have a sex worker Twitter, so a lot of the issues I talked about in the piece are also widespread and a lot of companions face similar issues, if not the same ones,” she added.
Januska and Kennedy said the use of spoken word in the production was a conscious decision, and an important way of highlighting today’s issues.
“I think spoken word is often what is missing from the monologues, especially because, as we said at the beginning, the monologues were written in 1999, so obviously there are a lot of monologues that Eve Ensler wrote that are not performed because they are not relevant,” Kennedy said.
Januska said she hopes the production helps people become more open-minded.
“I have to say that before I joined last year, I wasn’t as open-minded as I am post-joining it,” she said.
“Like definitions of sex work, things you don’t always consider to be sex work, or support that you didn’t know you were lacking in giving—by seeing all these other experiences being performed on stage, you see what is lacking in your own experience or lacking in your own knowledge of an experience.”
All the proceeds from the production will be going to the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre.
Image provided
