Cuntented.

To me, The Vagina Monologues represent everything I love about theater. Originally produced as a one-woman show by the writer, Even Ensler, at the Wow Cafe on the lower East Side in New York City, the show has taken a significant role in bringing female issues into the mainstream. The first rehearsal I had in New York for the production I stage managed there two summers ago was in the Wow Cafe. Being 18 at the time and wide-eyed about being in the Big City, everywhere I went felt like Holy ground. Only after my time in the lower East Side concluded did I learn that the Wow Cafe, La Mama (the burlesque theater across E 4th street) and The Kraine Theater (where was show was) were indeed part of the mecca of theatrical activism.

At theaters like the one's listed and dozens of others in New York, Chicago and Boston, shows that have nearly no budget, not much rehearsal time to speak of and a message are unveiling themselves to small, dedicated, adventurous audiences. The show isn't about the expensive lighting equipment or the ornate scenery, it's about using performance to inspire, to explain and to enlighten. When I first started getting involved with The Vagina Monologues, I wanted to show CCM that they didn't own theater on campus. I wanted to pull off a production wherein reality, we were striving for a staged reading. This relentless drive for theatricality was only abandoned once I had to act in the show.

I've never been one of those stage managers who secretly wanted to be a star on stage but wasn't good enough and receded into the dark wings of the theater. So when I was cast in The Vagina Monologues as Woman #2 I didn't know what to do with myself. The process of rehearsal allowed me to accept my role and appreciate the words I was presenting. I wasn't acting to make a fool of myself (which I inevitably do anyways), I was acting to tell the audience about vaginas and why I love the word cunt. I suddenly felt like a Biblical prophetess, telling my collegiate people to chant cunt and worship the vagina.

If I could write a proverb about my experience, it would be: Cunt you see? Theater is supposed to have a soul. That's how it's meant to be. So whether it be the first staged reading of what is soon to be a revolutionary, international phenomenon in NYC or a college production of The Vagina Monologues in the Engineering building, it's the conviction one has in their words and their dedication to the project on stage that matters.

My Audition Mantra.

I'm jealous of people who have a place to fit in. Lately, I feel like I've been auditioning for a place in the world. I have been walking into all of these different gatherings, with different roles in society, full of a variety of different people and each time I wait to feel the click--the metaphorical click of puzzle pieces into place. Each time, I am playing to a new audience, wearing a carefully thought out and planned out costume to align myself with the show I hope to find myself a part of.

And, yes, I have lived and worked with a slew and a half of actors but I've never understood how much it sucks to audition. You are putting yourself out there in a very vulnerable state after you've worked your ass off and you get rejected. There could be a million reasons why but all you can do is blame yourself and feel like you just aren't good enough.

I've been to the Undergraduate English Society meeting, to Triota (Women's Studies Honors Society), to The Vagina Monologues, to anything and everything and all I want to do is find my people. And maybe that's asking too much so all I want to do is find a place where I click, where I am happy, where I feel like I have purpose.

This state of being lost, in limbo, in pergatory begs too many questions. It leaves me questioning my ability to make real human connection, wondering whether my past has left me utterly defunct to humanity. And as I worry, I recede into myself and my word documents, into my bed and my television, into my own living death. I've been trying to fight it because the tears I've cried have done nothing for me but made me more aware of my underlying sadness. If you've only recently been reading this, you may not believe that once upon a time, I was a happy person.

And thusly, I will continue to audition for my role in life because apparently, no matter what act you come in during, you need to show up and be present. Even if the show is The Vagina Monologues...

Well, I've Been Afraid of Changing...

Sometimes I get scared that in these past few months I've lost my identity. There's something in the combination of losing what was such an integral aspect of who I was before college and the fact that I am so lost in these surroundings that has left me struggling.

It's the puzzle of combining the micro, meso and macro levels of an identity that is leaving me with a 1,500 piece jigsaw of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Who am I according to me? Who am I according to those who are in my life on a personal level? Who am I according to the jock who sits next to me in Bible class wondering which iTouch game I am playing? And with all of these questions come the assumptions you make about what others are think about you based upon your own internal belief system. Your identity is a combination of the different things you believe people feel about you.

Since I stopped stage managing after CLOC this summer, I lost something that was such a structure for who I was. I know it's not gone for long but right now, its absence leaves this awkward unstable aspect of me that invites conjecture about who I am beyond the theater. Suddenly, I am defining myself by my brain and my love for literature and English (which is whittling away as the academic spark in me is fading due to UC classes). And here at UC, those are very hard things to define yourself by because no one gives a flying Fig Newton about any of that.

So what do you do when your identity runs counter to the environment you are in? How do you become comfortable in an identity you are still so insecure about in a place that makes you feel lost? I guess if I knew the answers to these questions, I wouldn't be struggling to pass the few months I have left in Cincinnati. Maybe I would be trying to save myself from drowning rather than waiting out the storm in my bed with my crime dramas and kitten. Maybe I would feel comfortable enough in who I am in this moment to try harder to find my niche.

[A quick shout-out to a friend who loved me enough to remind me that I used to love writing here and for giving me a little incentive to try again.]