About the work
Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues based on roughly 200 interviews she conducted with women of different ages and backgrounds about their bodies and sexuality. She premiered the piece herself as a solo show at HERE Arts Center in New York on 3 October 1996; the production then moved to an Off-Broadway theatre, where it ran for more than three years. The German-language premiere took place in June 1999 at Staatstheater Stuttgart.
Plot
The piece consists of a series of independent monologues in which women speak about menstruation, first sexual experiences, childbirth, rape, ageing and self-determination, ranging from a survivor of rape in the Bosnian war to a woman in her seventies talking about her body. Rather than a continuous plot, the form strings together widely differing, sometimes comic, sometimes harrowing female experiences.
Cultural significance
Ensler won an Obie Award for the piece in 1997. In 1998, the work led her to found V-Day, a movement that raises money against violence toward women through benefit performances worldwide and states it has generated more than $100 million in donations. The play is among the most widely performed feminist works for the stage and is still staged every year around Valentine's Day.