Friday, May 08, 2009

V day

Watched an in-house production of the Vagina Monologues in March. I'd already seen Eve Ensler's HBO production, one snowed-in January night in Birmingham in 2003, chancing upon it quite by accident whilst channel surfing. It was riveting stuff.

The College does a Vagina Monologues production once every few years; the last one was in 2005 and I missed it. So when the V-Day posters sprung up this year, I knew that I wanted to see it. However, I am not all there these days and I tend to... well, forget, blank out etc. I've even got four white hairs, see. Or is it five?

I remembered 3 days before the show. Tickets, I was told, were sold out. I wrote to the director. She was all charm; I found mine just in time. I went in first day, first show. The company was great; I bumped into S, a Glaswegian journalist married to a Cuban who he'd met whilst living in Havana for 8 years. He's friends with TL, but we'd never really had a conversation. So we grabbed some beer, and hunkered down on some prime sofas to chat. He told me about Havana, since I am hoping to visit next year. I told him about Cuban diagnostic systems. We swapped notes about Santeria and Son. The girls came on, we settled back. It was great, in every way. A whole bunch of intelligent women, thoroughly enjoying themselves, which showed. Unlike TV, real people doing it had all the rawness and immediacy of passionate am-dram. I loved the Bosnian bit, because the woman doing it was actually Bosnian.

I wanted TYL to watch, but she couldn't get tickets. I've since been contemplating telling her that her company could think of an Indian production using Bharatnatyam, but felt that it would perhaps be a bit too explicit for Indian audiences.

I was wrong.

I saw this today. I am impressed. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

This doesn't mean that I am a feminist, as one person who reads this blog seems to think. I am no ist of any kind. At all.
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