'Monologues' celebrates women's sexuality
'Monologues' celebrates women's sexuality
I Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar
The simplest of performances can often carry the most poignant of messages.
That was precisely the case when six women from different walks of life performed the shockingly amusing and enlightening Vagina Monologues on Sunday at Denpasar's busiest alternative art space, Danes Art Veranda.
The Monologues was presented on a small, elevated stage, which was completely bare except for a single microphone standing in one corner. There were no impressive backdrops nor elaborate sets.
Minimal lighting and musical accompaniment further strengthened the performance's aura of simplicity.
It turned out that this unadorned stage provided the artists with ample space to explore and exploit the narrative power of the Monologues and to convey its messages in the most undiluted, touching way possible.
The Monologues explore the shame and embarrassment women feel about their own bodies and sexuality. It also expounds the grim reality of how male-dominated society has since time immemorial amplified these feelings by creating manipulative moral values and social structures so as to force women into submission. In short, women are compelled to abide by certain values just to be able to fit into society.
The first performer, Mauriel Ydo, one of the island's busiest social activists, provided a fine example of such forced values when she superbly narrated the story of a housewife who was abandoned by her husband simply because she felt unable to satisfy his sexual fetish for a shaven vagina.
To the husband, a cleanly-shaven vagina would heighten the sensuality of the woman. The wife vehemently rejected the notion.
It was a clash between the male's preconception of what makes a woman sensual and the woman's feelings about the subject.
In other parts of the performance, newly graduated Rika Puspasari gave a touching portrayal of a raped, victimized and traumatized woman while Bali's leading playwright and actress Cok Sawitri presented the vivid story of a proud prostitute.
Unfortunately, the Monologues' provocative words shocked the majority of the audience into a sort of intellectual numbness, which prevented them from appreciating the powerful message of the performance.
For instance, it seemed that the word pepek ("vagina" in the Balinese language), which was uttered repeatedly, clouded their minds, preventing them from digesting the fact that the performance was anything but a vulgar display of raw sexuality.
"Bali, after all, is a society where submission and servitude are still considered to be a woman's best virtues. It will take a while before the messages of the Monologues can be comprehended by the population at large," the host, Popo Danes, said.
Muriel Ydo says she is mulling over a plan to stage the Monologues for the traders at the city's biggest traditional market, Peken Badung.
The Vagina Monologues was first staged in 1996 at New York's Here theater. Based on interviews conducted with more than 200 women by its author, the celebrated Eve Ensler, the Monologues is, in the words of the New York Times' Dinitia Smith, "a celebration of women's sexuality and a condemnation of its violation."
It has been translated into over 35 languages and inspired Ensler to create V-Day in 1998 -- a global movement to stop violence against women and girls all over the world. Numerous celebrities have joined the movement, which campaigns against various forms of such violence, from domestic violence to rape and genital mutilation.
Sunday's performance was part of the closing ceremony for Lifestyles, an exhibition that brought together ten female painters and sculptors on a journey of self-exploration to see how the modern temptations of globalization and materialism had affected the way women viewed and treated their bodies and sexuality.
Caption Foto Vmonolog 1 dan 2:
Muriel Ydo reads lines from the Vagina Monologues, while dancer Jasmine Okubo presents a visual interpretation of the narrative.