Culture News Blog

Activist and feminist icon Eve Ensler will be at Vassar College's Susan Stein Shiva Theater, next Sunday, testing out a new satirical play and meeting some of her fans.

Reached by telephone from her New York office, Ensler acknowledged that fans of her politics and her huge hit "The Vagina Monologues" may outnumber those interested specifically in the staged reading of her new play "OPC." Regardless, she hopes students from Vassar will attend.

"I think it's a really great audience to try it out on, because the main character is young and really struggling in these times," she said. "I really want to see how it plays with young people."

Ensler's identity is forever entwined with "The Vagina Monologues," which has been staged thousands of times around the world, raising more than $50 million for programs that support abused women while advocating for human rights for women.

The last large-scale production of the Vagina Monolugues in the United States was held in the New Orleans Superdome with Jane Fonda and Oprah Winfrey as cast members. Fonda got in a little trouble promoting the production when she let slip the play's most-repeated slang for vagina during a prime-time television interview discussing the show.

Hearing Fonda utter the word that rhymes with "runt" horrified some.

The title for the Ensler's new play, "OPC," does not employ the same word in a variant of the slang shorthand OPP, which roughly stands for "other people's privates," Ensler assured with a laugh. It stands for Obsessional Political Correctness.

The main character in "OPC" is Romi, a Harvard dropout turned member of a dumpster-diving "freegan" collective that believes sustenance can be garnered from items found in the trash. Romi is comfortable with her life as a freegan until she finds unexpected success with the popularity of an apricot fruit leather dress she designs for her mother.

The dress is a fashion hit, and its commercial success thrusts Romi back into the world of wealth she had tried to leave behind, providing a source of conflict.

The play tweaks the biblical aphorism about how it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of heaven; for Romi it has to do with how difficult it is for a politically correct woman to hold to her beliefs when she is cursed with wealth.

Unless shut away from the world, people of conscience, like the fictional Romi, can't help but be confronted by myriad examples of injustice each day - injustice that should be fought, Ensler said.

"There was a time when we weren't so deeply in touch with every little thing that's happening in the world. Now you know when you're living with great privilege and resources you know at that exact same moment, someone's starving out there. You can actually see them."

Ensler has done more than simply keep abreast of abuses of women throughout the world, she's visited women in Afghanistan and in the Congo who have been stoned or raped. She said her most dangerous moments were probably when members of the Taliban knew she was in Afghanistan.

When asked about her recent world travels, Ensler mentioned her trip to Croatia and France, but tried to cut off that line of questioning. "It's not really that connected to 'OPC,'" she said.

It is newsworthy, however. Ensler was honored in Paris with the "Medaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris" presented by Deputy Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, Deputy Mayor in Charge of Equality Between Men and Women Fatima Lalem and Deputy Mayor in Charge of Culture Christophe Girard.

Usually, Ensler's travels have more to do with advocating for women than accepting plaudits, and some of those trips have drained her terribly.

Her exposure to women who have needed reconstructive surgery after having been gang raped by soldiers pushed her to the edge, she said.

"I've spent a lot of time in the Congo which is, without a doubt, the worst situation I've seen towards woman," she said. "I'm just recovering from it, to be quite honest."

"Being a writer," she said. "The fact that I have a way of transforming this into something is the way I've survived all these years. And I cry a lot."

Meeting activists and medical personnel who have ministered to violated women has also buoyed her, she said, specifically mentioning Dr. Denis Mukwege from Bekavu, Congo.

"He has literally sewn up hundreds and hundreds of women and helped them heal. And helped them turn their lives around," she said.

In her travels, Ensler has been able to do more than bear witness to atrocities and incorporate her reaction into her writing projects. The power base she has developed through the "Vagina Monologues" has enabled her to raise money to build clinics and promote businesses owned by women. And with a single plea on her V-Day website, Ensler can trigger a storm of letters condemning actions by political leaders.

After meeting Mukwege she decided to build a City of Hope residential center in the Congo next to the hospital where he works, she said.

"The whole idea is to create this place where they will be supported and nurtured and trained so they can become the next leaders of the DRC (the Democratic Republic of Congo.)"

Although Vassar has not yet agreed to set up a question and answer session following the staged reading of "OPC," Ensler said she would be game to participate in such a gathering.

"Any opportunity we can get people to get activated and get involved in what we're doing is an opportunity I relish," she said, especially if the session could be a combination of talking about the issues "OPC" raises and her larger experiences helping victims of violence around the world.

It wouldn't be a stretch, as the play raises questions about how much responsibility each citizen of the world has towards others, Ensler said.

"Obviously ('O.P.C.' is) a satire and it's obviously hyper-realism and all that but I think it really is asking, if you have a conscience how far do you go to help others?" she said. "And what happens and how do we function in the times we are in, knowing what we know?"

Her main focus will be to hear how the audience responds to the uncompleted play itself. Ensler will likely cut the play in sections, based on responses from the Vassar audience, and paste in others. She called the opportunity to try out the new play "a great gift."

For more information about Ensler's work visit www.vday.org. To learn about her opinions on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - as well as why she edited out some politically incorrect portions from her original "Vagina Monologues" - visit the Sunday life page at the Freeman website www.freemanonline.com.

This is cache, read story here