“Say Me/See Me/Say It”: Staging Stories and Transforming Communities in The Vagina Monologues

• Main Author: Carr, Margaret A.
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Boston College 2010
• Subjects: Vagina Monologues; Eve Ensler; performance studies; monologue; consciousness raising
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1207

Thesis advisor: Caroline Bicks === In the last ten years, Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues has morphed from a successful off-Broadway production into an activist movement that fosters fundraising productions of the play by community and campus groups in almost every country. In this thesis, I examine how the ‘body stories’ told by actual women made it to community stages all over the world through a series of translations: first, how Ensler poetically/theatrically interprets their stories; second, how the monologic form (and the current multiple-actor form) of the play affects the meaning of those stories; third, projecting how the audience reacts to those stories; and last, suggesting possibilities for broadening the audience’s experience into community discussion and social change. === Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. === Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. === Discipline: English Honors Program. === Discipline: College Honors Program. === Discipline: English.