Spring Break
'Vagina Monologues' deliver crowd-pleasing performance
Joshua Aromin
Issue date: 2/27/09 Section: Entertainment
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While "The Vagina Monologues" brings upon different emotions of crude hilarity and insightful sensibility, its moral importance cannot be stressed enough by director Anna Siradze.
"The message is very deep," Siradze said. "It's also empowering just for the women that are in that play. I don't want you to think of this as a theater production because by all means it's not."
The student cast come from a different variety of disciplines and majors ranging anywhere from anthropology to pharmacy.
"These women have nothing to do with theater. We're just as petrified as anybody else walking down the street on getting on stage, but we've worked so hard for this," said Siradze.
Regardless of Siradze's concerns about acting, the inexperience of the performers was not evident. The players recited lines naturally and delivered them with appropriate emotion for each scene.
The crowd was more than receptive to the effort put on stage and laughed wildly with the risqué jokes on a night when risqué and taboo didn't exist. Likewise, the crowd was hushed and sensitive to more dramatic scenes.
A business and marketing major herself, Siradze thinks that the production should not be judged merely by its acting but that the message it conveys is more significant. And while each story invokes different sentiments, all relate back to the vagina.
"It's not seen per se as an anatomical part, but more symbolic," Siradze said. "So everything that we do in the play and that you hear and see, you have to think of it on a deeper level."
"The Vagina Monologues" was written by playwright Eve Ensler in 1996 to convey violence faced by women. "And so [Ensler] noticed how women that grew up in violent societies don't feel as empowered because they are constantly oppressed whether it's through sexual assault, rape, molestation, mutilation, etc.," Siradze said.
