thegoodbody.comFor those who plan on staying in town over break and braving the St. Louis winter, there might just be shelter from the storm, feminist-style. From Jan. 3-8, Eve Ensler, playwright and performer of “The Vagina Monologues” and founder of V-Day, an organization to end violence against women and girls, will bring the tour of her new play, “The Good Body,” to our own Edison Theatre. “The Good Body,” which debuted on Broadway in Oct. 2004, is a cross-cultural exploration of the female body and the pressures women face to change it: to shape it, cover it, or expose it. Cadenza spoke to Ms. Ensler by phone from Dallas, Texas.
Cadenza: How do you think “The Good Body” builds on your other work? Why is it important to you?
Ensler: It’s a continuation of the kind of journey. We’re looking at how women are disempowered, how we’re distracted and taken off track, how we’re made to believe, for example, that if we can just get our bodies perfect and fit everything else will work out, and how it really derails us from power. You know, what’s really been fascinating about this tour is just seeing how many women throughout America, throughout North America, spend their days fixing, tightening and lightening, and flattening and dieting, and everything else when they could have gotten to be running the world. And how this obsession.just how profound and vast and complex it is.
C: Does this play have a particularly strong message for college-aged students?
E: Well, I definitely think it’s focused on all women, but there’s a particular focus on younger women because I think that the mandate now is the obsession and the kind of programming that’s done to us. Whether it’s by the kind of corporate capitalist system or religion or by patriarchy, this kind of ongoing pressure and mandate to be skinny and to be blonde and to be perfect.it’s so over the top right now.like the rise in eating disorders….I was told by a woman last week that a majority of the women in high school get a nose job and a boob job for their graduation – and a car. And I said no. [laughs] We’re talking about high schools at this point. I know how powerful women are, and I see how we’ve been convinced that if we can just fix this thing with our body . really, what we should be doing is fixing the world which is in radically desperate shape right now.
C: How do you see U.S. foreign policy in light of its self-defined project to at least in part liberate women?
E: As you already know, I’ve spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, and V-Day has supported women over there for a long time. I was actually there under the Taliban and I’ve been back there since. And I think in both situations, Afghanistan and Iraq – in Iraq the situation is worse today than under Saddam Hussein. I mean, if it’s possible, we’ve actually made it worse for women in Iraq. I mean, the constitution as it stands will actually reverse laws that were fairly liberating under Saddam Hussein, and in fact it was one of the most liberal countries in the Middle East for women. And now the Iraqi constitution, with the implication of Sharia law and everything else, will absolutely set women back. We [at V-Day] are supporting women, and we actually are just about to open with a partner [in Iraq] who we’re supporting.the first satellite women’s TV station. And we’ve been supporting her and opening shelters for women since the U.S. bombing….In Afghanistan, every report I get says the Taliban is on the rise, we’ve been searching for Al Qaeda operatives who are no longer in Afghanistan – they’ve moved to Iraq, as you know. And we’ve taken our eyes off the Taliban and they are at large. Women are still wearing burkas because they’re still in terror. We have not addressed the fundamental issues of poverty, and as long as women are poor and in desperate straits they will always be controlled and violated and unfree. So until you address those kinds of principles it’s a sham, it’s a sham.
C: So is the feminist message failing to take on a global dimension?
E: Well, you know that the play for V-Day has been done in 88 countries at this point. And if you go to the Web and see the countries that are doing it this year, it’s pretty amazing..We just opened the Karameh program, which is an Arabic name for dignity. We just opened our first offices.in Egypt, and we had a huge conference there in July, and then we opened the first safe house for battered women, with women on the ground there, and did a leadership conference in Beirut..So the V-Day message is spreading far and wide in the Middle East. It’s really beginning to happen, and it’s very exciting. Very exciting.
C: In spite of the foreign policy, then, maybe?
E: Exactly. Exactly. I simply do not believe that this government fought a war to liberate the women of Afghanistan or Iraq when they’re trying to desecrate the Violence Against Women Act in America..It’s hard to believe that they’d now care about women in Iraq. Why? Based on what?
C: Why have you stuck with theatre as the primary venue for your ideas?
E: It’s interesting. I’ve done a few documentaries. You know we did a documentary on women in prison, and “The Vagina Monologues” was a documentary, and we just did this “Until the Violence Stops” documentary as well. But you know, I am a believer in theatre.and I think the reason is because.it really has the potential for social change in the moment. It has the potential to change your body, to change something inside you. There’s something inherently revolutionary about the theatre, because you exist in a community in the same moment with a group of strangers who are all there together in the room, in the present tense. There is something vital that can happen and does happen.. And look, I’ve seen what’s happened with “The Vagina Monologues.” I mean, come on – 30 million dollars [raised for V-Day] in eight years. I know it has to do with theatre and the particular energy and vitality and prism through which words and energy get communicated. It’s not polarizing. It doesn’t lock people into this or that. It allows people to laugh or to feel differently.
C: I know a lot of people are excited for you to come.
E: I’m very excited. You know, my mother’s from Missouri..I’m very excited to be coming.
Cadenza reporter Kate McCabe contributed to this article.