The Vagina Monologues has endured across the globe for 25 years and remains highly relevant, but Kai Hsieh (謝鎧安) and her co-producers wanted this year’s version to be more inclusive and hit home harder.
For the past two years, MOWES, the community space for women that Hsieh co-founded, has put on well-received, bilingual performances of Eve Ensler’s classic play that explores female sexuality from “what do you call your vagina” to gender-based violence and body dysmorphia.
After the last show concluded in February last year, they sent out a 50-question survey to their friends in Taiwan and abroad, receiving about 120 responses that have turned into their new production, A Sacred Space (神聖秘境), which will debut this weekend.
Photo courtesy of MOWES
“We could relate to the stories from the Vagina Monologues, but we felt that they were always kind of detached,” Hsieh says. “The degrees of separation in this show are like one, two maybe three.”
Hsieh co-wrote the new production with Sheridan Harris and Maja Ho (候梅婷).
“I think the difference is just knowing that [the stories are] from someone who’s in the community, someone who’s potentially in the room, someone you might know,” Harris says. “I think just with that understanding, you feel this gratitude as an audience member that someone is willing to share that with you, which makes it so much more personal.”
Photo courtesy of MOWES
There will be three showings in a combination of English, Mandarin and Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) this weekend at The Hive in Taipei. Tomorrow night’s event is a benefit gala that will fund the organization’s gender equality outreach programs in schools, while the full shows are at 4pm and 7:30pm on Saturday.
BALANCING VOICES
Hsieh says that while she and her co-producers love the Vagina Monologues and the events it has inspired across the globe, it seemed like a time for an update. They wanted to incorporate more transsexual and gender identity issues into the show as well as issues like abortion and childbirth and the different paths cisgender women, transgender people and nonbinary folk can explore these days.
Photo courtesy of MOWES
The three primary writers sifted through all of the survey responses, conducted follow-up interviews with some who wanted to go deeper and incorporated them into 18 pieces.
“We really wanted to shed light on all the different experiences. It’s like, we all have different perspectives even about hair,” Hsieh says. One piece discusses the differences between public hair and pubic hair, and how both are still socially policed for women.
The challenge was to portray and rewrite these stories without taking away from the originals. It’s especially hard, Hsieh says, because much of it is quite personal and traumatic in terms of her own experiences.
“It’s having to balance, ‘Okay, this is some really messed up stuff and it’s really hard to read through this,’ while looking at it objectively so that it can be made into something that can be performed,” she says.
Harris agrees.
“It was difficult to figure out how I wanted to share this with people, but also how I wanted to write it for myself. It took a lot of time trying to figure out how to honor other people’s stories and not wanting to add too much of my voice or personality,” she says.
A SAFE SPACE
Ultimately, it’s about giving people a safe place to share their stories. As someone who is comfortable with her body, Hsieh says she has learned much talking to people who aren’t, but they are often reluctant to share these experiences, which make up a huge part of who they are.
On the other end, she hopes that the show generates respectful conversation for people who have been afraid to ask questions. There will be some time after the shows on Saturday and at the after party to mingle.
One thing Hsieh noticed was that despite the notion that the West is much more sexually open, there was one story about someone who attended an all-girls school in Canada where it was forbidden to discuss one’s period, and the student handbook warned students that they would go to hell for touching themselves.
“You assume certain differences between the Western and Eastern world, but then you realize that there’s sexist assholes and misogyny everywhere, and sexual freedom and expression is always repressed no matter what part of the world,” Hsieh says.
The last piece for all three shows is titled “The Differences,” where the entire cast will take the stage and share their personal experiences about how it’s like to be in their bodies. Like Hsieh and Harris, it’s been quite an emotional ride for the performers too.
“In the previous performances when we did cast rehearsals, I don’t remember people crying,” Hsieh says. “People have cried at every single rehearsal, so I already know that it’s a moving and emotional journey for them. It’s really exciting to see what it’s going to be like when we are performing this in front of 50 people who have never heard these stories at all.”
And Hsieh hopes that MOWES’ outreach program will help the next generation deal with gender issues better than they did.
“As I’m reading through these pieces, I thought, if only we were taught at a younger age to believe in ourselves and to feel safe and comfortable with who we were, then maybe we wouldn’t have had to go through the trauma and all the negative effects as adults. We really want to target the youth so we can help them grow into more compassionate and hopefully stable human beings.”
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