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Vagina Monologues: Bible for new women

The Young Reporter (2004, April), 36(07), pp. 9.
Author: Victoria Ip Tin-wai. Editor: Dorothy Yip Ka-kee.
Permanent URL - https://sys01.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/bujspa/purl.php?&did=bujspa0015381

By Victoria Ip Tin-wai

02000148@hkbu.edu.hk

WOMEN spread their legs. Women talk about the thrill of female orgasms. Women look at vaginas with mirrors. Don’t get me wrong as I am not helping you to visualize the content of a porn movie here. I am only describing what Hong Kong actresses do in Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues (TVM), which is hailed as “the bible for a new generation of women” .

Topics covered in the play are diversified yet they have one thing in common: women. They range from women’s hatred towards their vaginas to their excitement about their sexual awakening, from their ambivalence towards menstruation to their painful experience of being raped. And the list goes on.

The local performance of Ensler’s play finally made its debut in Hong Kong. Playhouse Theatre, a local playhouse, presented it on February 14, with three shows in Cantonese and three shows in English.

“I say vagina because I want people to respond,” said playwright Eve Ensler. But how do traditional Hong Kong audience respond to the forbidden “Vagina” ?

Momoko Cheng, director of TVM, is more positive about Hong Kong audience’s response to the play. “Most of them have enjoyed it and the performance has also made them think about their vaginas or their friends’ vaginas, in terms of something that they have never looked at before.”

“In Cantonese shows, local old conceptions hinder the audience from trying their best to understand the play,” Cheuk Nam- wan, producer of TVM, said.

Queenie Cheung, an actress from the play, doubts that Hong Kong audience accepts TVM. “It is obvious that foreign audiences get into it much quickly than Hong Kong audiences. One of my friends said it was kind of hard to accept the whole thing during the first few scenes,” she said.

Shirley Tsoi, another actress, said that her friends felt estranged from the play when they heard words like hymen, clitoris, vagina. She said that the play contained a lot of hilarious scenes and the script was humorous, but what concerned her most was whether the audience caught the sad messages behind these jokes - women are passive when talking about their bodies.

She felt insulted when some men took advantage of her when she is young, and she still has this feeling now. She hopes to understand her body better and search for women's identity through the play.

Steve Guo, a journalism professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said, “The play is too much for Hong Kong people. It is like asking them to do undergraduate courses when they are in primary school.” He also thinks that Hong Kong society is two or three steps behind what Ensler asks women to do since the weight of traditional morals is very strong here. Hence people do not question why traditions like the taken-for-granted suppression of female sexuality are here in the first place.

Peter Jordan, a drama lecturer from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, agrees with Guo's view, “In the 70s women from the west burnt bras as a symbol of their liberation... but I have never seen something like this happened in Hong Kong.” He thinks that staging “The Vagina Monologues” for a few middle class people is not going to change a lot in terms of Hong Kong people's perception of female sexuality.

“But it (the play) is there and it is being shown and some people are talking about it,” Jordan said. He thinks that the play is very well written and it demystifies a lot for men as well.

Guo believes that the play’s influence on an audience is extremely limited. He said, “I think the problem with TVM is that there are too many slogans and too much moralizing. I think every bit of it is right but the approach is too hard sell.”

He said that it was like suddenly encouraging women to go on topless on the streets in summer. Theoretically, there was nothing wrong, but in a modern city, one could never sell that idea to people.

TVM is a huge success in the United States. Celebrities like Ally Mcbeafs Calista Flockhart, Jane Fonda and Oprah Winfrey performed in the play and talked about their vaginas. The play had been shown in cities all over the U. S. and in many universities. TVM gave birth to a dynamic grassroots movement, V-Day (February 14), which aims to stop violence against women around the world.

TVM presented by Playhouse Theatre on February 14 is part of the V-Day movement.

The money raised on V-Day was given to organizations fighting for the rights of women in developing countries.

Edited by Dorothy Yip Ka-kee

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