The anatomy of a woman

‘The Vagina Monologues’ isn’t about genitals

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Nearly 20 years ago, a woman from New York City decided the world needed to talk about vaginas.

Since 1996, Eve Ensler’s celebrated play The Vagina Monologues has made its way around the globe, inviting audiences to laugh, weep, seethe and rejoice at the real stories of women — from the bliss of sexual awakenings to the embarrassment of trips to the gynecologist to the terror of sexual assault.

In 1998, the success of Ensler’s work spawned V-Day, a global nonprofit movement to raise money for groups working to end violence against women and girls through performances of The Vagina Monologues.

It seems, perhaps, like the world now is at least more capable of talking about vaginas. But for folks like Miriam Schiff, the conversation is much bigger, and it isn’t about genitals at all.

“My heart is open to all women, with or without vaginas — if you identify as a woman, I don’t really care,” says Schiff, a V-Day coordinator in Boulder. She is directing The Vagina Monologues for the fourth year running, with proceeds from three showings at the Nomad Theatre going to Out Boulder, a nonprofit organization that provides education, services and programming to Boulder County’s LGBTQ communities.

“This year Eve Ensler said in the [V-Day] guidelines that anybody who identifies as a woman belongs in The Vagina Monologues,” Schiff says. “Last year I had to call her up and say, ‘Can they have penises?’” 

Schiff wasn’t alone in her questions about how the play defines a woman. The clarification in the guidelines for benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues — such as the production Schiff is staging in Boulder — came after all-female liberal arts college Mount Holyoke canceled their yearly performance of the play this January, calling the show’s perspective on being a woman “reductionist and exclusive,” particularly because they felt the play is not inclusive of transgender women.

However, in 2004, Ensler created a monologue called “They Beat the Girl Out of My Boy,” written from interviews with transgender women. This piece has been available for inclusion in performances ever since.

Through four years of performances, Schiff has been adamant about including the trans monologue in her productions, but only if she has trans women who are willing to perform it.

Sara Connell and Jennifer Molde performed the trans piece last year. Molde, who has been living as a woman for eight years, will be joining the Boulder cast again this year.

“Despite the problems with The Vagina Monologues, I believe it is primarily a production about gender rights — about women’s rights — and so despite the problems that it has, that message comes across that we need to start treating people better and no one should be discriminated for their gender,” Molde says.

Connell, a trans woman, agrees that for her, the play has some shortcomings, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of performance.

“I’m a really strong believer in being able to be critical of something and loving it at the same time,” Connell says. “I think if anything you’re most critical of the things you love because you’re invested in them, because you want them to be better.

“There are a lot of trans people that are critical of [television shows like] Orange is the New Black or Transparent but it’s not because they don’t want those shows to exist, it’s because they want those shows to be better than they already are,” she says.

Connell adds that it takes intentional work — “front end work” — to make sure that transgender women are a part of the conversation in the Monologues — work that Schiff has done.

“They had an intro to the transgender piece,” Schiff says. “I read it and I said, ‘What a piece of crap. Fluff. Complete fluff.’” The intro, Schiff says, had no statistics about transgender women, including numbers about violence against trans women. So, Schiff went back to the V-Day organization and asked that it be rewritten — and it was.

“The intro is about as long as the monologue now, but everything in it is what it should be,” she says.

At the end of the day, Schiff says, the Monologues are about starting conversations and bringing awareness to the fact that women all over the world are still subject to violence.

“As long as violence against women is escalating, as long as I see commercials on television for women’s feminine products, as long as women are marginalized in this society, as long as there are women in the Congo who are being raped and killed because of the minerals we put in our cells phones — I could go on and on,” she says, “but it’s as relevant today as it was 20 years ago.”

ON THE BILL: The Vagina Monologues, Friday, April 17, 8 p.m. Saturday, April 18, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nomad Theatre, 1410 Quince Ave., Boulder. Tickets $20 for adults, $15 for seniors/students at www.miriamschiff.com/v-day-boulder-2015.