'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.