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.