'Vagina Monologues' sparks discussion with ending

Three questions at the end of this year’s performances of The Vagina Monologues have sparked dialogue among Penn students.

Last Friday and Saturday nights in Irvine Auditorium, as the show ended, the V-Day Board — which organizes the performance piece every year ­— asked audience members to stand if they are a survivor of sexual violence, if they know anyone who is a survivor and if they will pledge to help put an end to sexual violence.

College junior Anusha Alles, who saw the performance on Friday night, said she was shocked by the number of people who stood up. “It made a very direct impact on everyone who was there to see it,” she said.

Alles added that she felt it was the most powerful part of the performance. “The show already leaves you thinking with all these performances, and then this happens,” she said, referring to the show’s ending.

“It was a real chance for the audience to engage with the show in a way that was never possible before,” said College senior Jody Pollock, co-director of this year’s Vagina Monologues and former Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer. “We wanted to tell the audience to be active and not let them leave with just a passive viewing of the show.”

College senior Ilana Millner, V-Day board member and DP opinion artist, emphasized that no one was forced to stand up in response to the questions. “There were no spotlights. The lights shone equally on everyone, including members of the cast,” she said.

Millner also explained that the inspiration for the questions came from a documentary on the history of The Vagina Monologues. She transcribed the questions asked by Eve Ensler, playwright of The Vagina Monologues, at the end of the show’s first production.

However, some students had objections to the questions. Nursing freshman Lisa Doi said she disagrees with the show’s organizers that the audience was in a “safe space.”

“I think if you create a safe space people have to enter into it knowingly,” Doi said. “I entered into the theater intending to see a production. I didn’t feel that I was in a safe space.”

Despite her objections, Doi believes that the type of questions asked will have a positive effect in the long run. “It’s so easy to be silent about it and overlook it,” Doi said, in regards to sexual abuse.

“The number of men and women who stood for that first question was astonishing,” said Pollock. For the second question, she said, “about half the audience [stood], including my mother. When we asked the third question, three levels of over a thousand audience members were standing on their feet in solidarity, along with the cast.”

“I don’t really even have words to express that feeling,” she added.

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