A Campus Connoisseuse

I left the closing performance of The Vagina Monologues yesterday at the Freddy Wood theatre not entirely sure how I felt about this year’s performance. This would be third year I’ve gone to the UBC VDay performance, and the first in which it was held at that venue. I wasn’t really a fan of the previous one (the Music Auditorium), so I thought this was an improvement.

I think the biggest problem with the performance was the costumes. Normally this isn’t a problem, so it took me a while to see it as one. The costumes just didn’t work. I couldn’t believe the actors were the people the monologues were supposed to be from. It wasn’t the actors were worse than the ones in previous years. They just often weren’t good enough to get past the inappropriate costumes.

For me, the “Coochie Snorcher” monologue was worst for this — the actor’s glistening pink cocktail dress just wouldn’t let me believe she was the girl in the piece. I mention this monologue for a second reason — each time I see it, the more it disturbs me. Its message just doesn’t fit with the rest of the play, and with it, seems to say, “rape is good for you if women do it.”

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I’ve gone to The Vagina Monologues every year since I got to UBC — and this term, with the new play A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer I decided I’d change it up and go to that instead. With the deadline to WCCCE looming and my coauthors still sending me revisions, I figured only one of the two would be enough for this weekend.

And so this afternoon I was off to the play. I was told it had male actors, and would be about gendered violence. I got my hopes up — finally, we would see a more complete picture of gendered violence than the women-are-victims-of-men depiction of The Vagina Monologues. And naturally, I was disappointed. The male-led monologues didn’t deal with violence against men, nor did the women-led ones. The male-led monologues showed how violence against women hurts them. And it does. And I don’t want to demean the very brave message of protesting violence against women. But wasn’t it supposed to be about gendered violence?

If violence against women is swept under the rug, where is violence against men swep to? Bolted under the hardwood floors?

The play started off being fairly crappy, with an irritating duo about a single mother and her son. But it eventually did move to some powerful, meaningful stuff: the Maurice monologue about a date rape, the Blueberry Hill monologue about fighting back against a gang rape, and a monologue written by NY Times journalist Nicholas D Kristof about prostitutes in Cambodia. This was good theatre. It got you feeling, it got you thinking.

And then, after getting me engaged, getting me impressed — the ending sucked. It ended without a catharsis like Reclaiming Cunt from The Vagina Monologues. Worse, it ended with cliches: the actors standing in a line saying words in the most painfully stereotypically avant garde way possible. Instead of coming out of the play wanting to do better in the world, I came out feeling like I’d been subjected to Full Moon from Sex and the City.

And so, as I left, I couldn’t help but buy a ticket for The Vagina Monologues on my way out. My day won’t be done until Cunt is Reclaimed.

***

A better ending I saw recently was that in the opera Louis Riel last weekend. It was epically done and wonderfully foreshadowed by the death of Scott earlier in the performance.

I found the performance of John A. McDonald and his cronies to be quite engaging. The aria in Cree done by Marguerite was also impressive. I found the solo bits and the chorus parts to be both well done, but whenever a handful of people were singing as conversation, it was horribly cacophonic. It seemed not to be well synchronised, which was disappointing.

Also disappointing were the subtitles: the number of typos in them was embarrassing, as was the French translations during some parts. Nevertheless, the story was solid and the acting well-done. It was worth my time, if not only to learn the lesson to see operas at the Chan centre from the balcony rather than the lower parterre; I began the performance down below trapped in between fidgety people who clearly didn’t like opera. Moving to an empty seat in the balcony during intermission was probably the largest enhancement of my experience of the performance.