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"This is what a feminist looks like." So reads a young yuppie's pink t-shirt. The message is replicated on others worn by the hordes of upper-middle-class white women streaming into Hammerstein Ballroom. V-Day's second marquee event, clunkily named A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and a Prayer, is essentially an open-ended Vagina Monologues -- not only meditating on the said organ but more generally on violence against women and girls. Here, V-Day has been reincarnated, becoming Until the Violence Stops: NYC, a two-week festival of theater, spoken-word, performance, and community events meant to expose and publicize the issue of violence against women. This particular show, the program claims, is for the writers.
At first glance, the crowd is much what you'd expect -- a combination of a Dar Williams concert audience and a high-powered female lawyer luncheon. The background music is provided by a woman on a piano, warbling softly in a perfect imitation of Sarah McLachlan. But as the venue fills, others puncture the typecast crowd. A caramel-skinned four-year-old clings to her dreadlocked mother in the fourth orchestra seat. Three businessmen rip off the pink "Reserved" signs on their box seats and begin to leaf through their programs. And there, in the thick of the audience, is Rosario Dawson, giving someone a gracious hello.
I decide to throw away my prejudices, to simply soak in what I see and not what I've heard. Besides college renditions of the Vagina Monologues -- the now-famous Eve Ensler play that single-handedly spawned the late '90s V-day movement -- I have seen the Monologues performed only once before, on a family vacation in Provincetown. My father was one of the only men in the audience, standing out among several hundred boisterous women. I remember being profoundly jarred by the performance. I didn't quite feel like a part of the audience, but I nonetheless appreciated the show's vigor -- its mix of rage and joy.
I feel the same way amidst the resounding applause that meets Ensler as she takes the stage. Dressed in all white and standing against a plum-colored screen, she is positively radiant. "The story of women is the story of humanity," she says with force and color. "We don't have real leaders right now" -- caustic concurrence from the audience -- "but we can trust writers."
I take a good look at some of the writers on the program: Alice Walker, Nicholas Kristof, Howard Zinn, Anna Deveare Smith. And the performers: Isabella Rossellini, Kerry Washington, Cynthia Nixon, Jody Williams. This is what a feminist could look like... pretty much anyone.
"Junior high is God's little joke on teenagers," Nia Vardalos declares in a let-me-tell-you sort of voice. She is every bit as cute and charming as she was in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, here narrating Kathy Najimy's hilarious and deeply triumphant monologue about narrowly escaping rape. This piece is first for a reason. "Strong-willed women are not all bitter man-haters," it seems to say (as this '70s stereotype is still very much alive). "Woman are just trying to feel safe and respect themselves."
 Kerry Washington
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Other pieces are not so matter-of-fact, or exultant. Some are laden with fury, pain, and frustration. Kerry Washington and Johanna Day perform a rattling duet, centered around a woman being dragged on the street, her head cracking against the city ice. Washington, portraying a woman from Rwanda with a resounding voice, connotes in her story the obvious union of hate and lust. Kimberlé Crenshaw performs her own piece, asserting: "Black vaginas built this country. . .it was less valuable when it was protected, respected. . .rape was only something that happened to white vaginas."
A few of the monologues come from men. Nicholas Kristof's piece, performed by John Benjamin Hickey, chronicles the journalist's visit to a brothel in Cambodia. He tells of his visceral desire to yank those women out of there, to rescue them from early deaths. But, he adds dutifully, "journalists aren't supposed to get involved." He admits that he has exploited them, too, like the men that came before him: "they will stay behind to die of AIDS", while he will profit from his front-page New York Times article.
The second half of the evening is not quite as strong and the audience has thinned out, some unable to handle the show's almost four-hour run. There are a lot more typically angry pieces, the type where you are first struck by the performer's power, and then drift off to the familiar rhythm. But there are some prevailing moments. Kate Clinton's piece is funny and brightens up the atmosphere, sneering at the fact that "men have always said that women have no sense of humor." Cynthia Nixon proves herself a real actress -- Miranda from Sex and the City melts away to reveal a woman much more emotionally invested in making men understand the instincts of women.
Strangely, the non-white actors keep being grouped together. "What is this, the ethnic section?" my friend whispers wryly. Sarita Choudhury, the statuesque actress from Mississippi Masala, performs a bizarre monologue of a dead Indian woman, alongside Suheir Hammad, a frequent Def Jam Poetry performer. Hammad's voice sounds full and persistent as she goes beyond her own usual prosaic spoken word, portraying a Muslim woman in Tariq Ali's monologue.
The show is accessible and low-key, despite its fashionable décor. The celebrities are wearing whatever they want. They're reading, sometimes messing up a little, but not stressing. They're not receiving a cent for their performances, and can be seen mingling on the ground level, crouching in the balcony to catch the rest of the show.
Ensler speaks to us as if we were all in her living room. "She just seems like an ordinary woman doing extraordinary things," says my friend. Yes, I think, like raising $35 million towards starting a worldwide movement. Like providing the momentum for thousands of V-Day events in the United States each year.
But during a particularly long monologue, I stare at my free ticket for the event, which has cost everyone else 25 dollars. The crowd's composition makes sense, of course. Celia, the immigrant woman portrayed by Rosario Dawson not long ago, couldn't have afforded to go to this event. Neither could Williams' Salvadoran women or Howard Zinn's Depression-era mother. But their words have made it to midtown. And the dollars from the affluent spectators are being shot back to where they belong. Still, I think, it would be nice if the crowd matched the diversity of the performers.
The show winds down, and Charlotte Martin, the McLachlan-like singer from the beginning, performs a thoroughly uninspiring song in front of a whittled-down audience. Ohhh, Charlotte. Definitely the type of person who would wear a pink "This is what a feminist looks like" t-shirt. But the pile of shirts at the front of the Ballroom is selling quickly. And as I walk out, I spot Suheir Hammad pulling a white one over her abundant curls, the starchy white piercing against her long, gold-weaved black sheath.
— 10 July 2006
