Penn students got personal at Wednesday’s premiere of The Penn Monologues.
The Penn Monologues, Penn’s version of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, were written and performed exclusively by members of the Penn community. Of the 15 monologues delivered before the packed audience, 11 were performed by their writers.
Students shared accounts of sexuality, rape, vaginas, eating disorders, body image and college hook-up culture, while audience members snapped their fingers or clapped every time part of a monologue resounded with them.
Two female duos and 10 individual female performers read monologues. Three men also performed, adding a male perspective to women’s issues. One male performer lamented that some men’s brutality towards women should not define all men.
The monologues ranged from comical to tragic, from quirky to poignant, according to Penn Women’s Center Director Felicity Paxton. Stories particularly stressed the need for communicating more about sex, she added.
After the performance, Paxton led a question-and-answer session, during which audience members discussed their reactions to the monologues and voiced their own opinions.
Students also discussed what they would like to do with the new sense of empowerment they felt after seeing the show.
The cast and crew of the 2010 production of The Vagina Monologues began the movement that led to the Penn Monologues. According to Paxton, the Penn Monologues serves as an important bridge between The Vagina Monologues and Take Back the Night.
“In my opinion, this event fulfilled a need,” she said. “This event is a really important bridge between these two rituals that we’ve had for a long time in the Penn calendar. What’s so great about this event is that these are the voices of our students.”
“The energy was contagious,” added Shaina Adams-El Guabli, the program and outreach coordinator at the Penn Women’s Center. “It was exciting to see these students come together with the support of the Penn Women’s Center.”
College senior Lea Defrance, the Penn Monologues’s co-producer, stressed the importance of keeping the show’s dialogue alive past Wednesday evening.
“The whole reason we wanted to stage this production was to have Penn’s voices be heard by other Penn voices,” Defrance said. “If everyone is cognizant of these issues and the fact that they do exist at Penn, we can finally start moving towards harmony and understanding.”
