The Vagina Monolouges

"The Vagina Monolouges" was the first theatrical production I have participated in since my senior year of high school. The timing was quite nice since we were studying monolouge plays, their structure, their purpose, etc in class while I was in rehearsal for the production here on campus. Participating in this year's production had large influence on both my monolouge play and my first ten-minute play. By participating in the play, I thought a lot about different ways to stage a monologe. Only the speaker could be on stage. Or the entire cast could be on stage while each actor delivers. Or only part of the cast could be on stage for each monolouge delivery. Quiet, on-stage cast memebers could react to the monolouge or they could remain stone-faced as if they don't hear anything. These were all things I thought about when writing my play. Which arrangement of the cast would be most effective for each monolouge delivery? The other thing that "The Vagina Monolouges" helped me with for my monolouge play was to think about the flow and order of the monolouges. Did I like putting two starkly contrasting personalities and opinions right next to each other? Or did I want the opinions/personalities to flow into each other? Participating in this production helped me think about the flow of my own monolouges a great deal.
I think "The Vagina Monolouges" helped me mostly with my first ten-minute play, "In Memory Of." In the production here on campus, the monolouge I was in, "Say It," was split into five parts. The five of us operated as a supportive group for each other, shared lines, and still presented a cohesive monolouge. I think splitting the piece into five parts gave it more strength. Passion and tension and anger built between us as we spat out names of diseases or names for the comfort women. We played off each other very nicely and the communal aspect to the monolouge strengthened it. I used this in my slam piece, two women building off of each other, engaging in internal debate, and building tension, anger, and other emotions throughout the piece. Performing a group piece that was orginally meant for just one person helped me think about the strength of a single narrative split into multiple parts and delivered by more than one person.