All Points North - Vagina Monologues: A V-Day Special

“My Vagina is Angry!”

This was just one of the outbursts during the recent rendition of The Vagina Monologues, performed by the College Theatre Association at Plattsburgh State University College. The director this year was Cristin Murphy and the producer was KeriAnne Murphy.

The play began in darkness, with a spotlight focused on the middle of the stage, where a black box and two black chairs stood. As the crowd grew quiet, women dressed in red and black began to walk onto the stage. They talked about vaginas and, as the introduction to the monologues continued, offered various names from around the world given to the vagina, such as cootchie snorcher.

These ladies obviously worked diligently at memorizing the words to these monologues, some of which stretched for about three or four minutes. At times the speeches were so long and complicated that the actors needed notecards. The Vagina Monologues' covers all things vagina, with topics ranging from a woman's first feelings of sexuality to female genital mutilation.

“The Vagina Workshop” is a story about a woman who had never had an orgasm on purpose. She had been attending a sex class designed to teach women about their own bodies and the joy in finding themselves sexually. The speaker, Cristina Velez, sat on a chair through her entire part, but she captivated me by changing to an upper-class accent, using full facial and upper body movement.

In the monologue “The Memory of Her Face,” Darcy Kloss speaks about women from different countries that had been brutalized to the point where their facial features were no longer recognizable. One husband's cruelty had developed in stages: hitting her with clay pots; beating her with a belt, which left welts on the inside of her thighs; beating her with his own fists; and then by throwing a jar of acid into her face.

While occasionally melancholy, there were some humorous points in the play as well. During “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” the audience burst out laughing. The woman who had worked as a tax lawyer found none of the same pleasure in her job that she did when she made women moan pleasure. This part was given to Nikki Plyem. I have seen this show in the past and was anxiously awaiting this monologue. In this part of the play, the woman performing this has to be very sure of herself because she has to demonstrate a number of extremely convincing moans such as the Clitoral and Vaginal Moan.

I enjoyed the production the first time I saw it, and this performance was no disappointment either. I loved it from start to finish. It was made enjoyable for me because the women on stage obviously enjoyed their roles. They didn't just stand on the stage and recite their lines off cards. They threw their bodies and voices into the movements of the play.