50 Shades of Grey might currently be making the headlines, but how much do women really know about their bodies? Sandra Aquilina puts the question to Nanette Brimmer, before her staging of The Vagina Monologues.

Nanette BrimmerNanette Brimmer

“If it’s not out there, it’s behind the door,” says Nanette Brimmer halfway through our interview.

Reclaiming the topic of female sexuality from the darkness and secrecy that had long surrounded it, it is one of the reasons why she will be directing The Vagina Monologues, a series of monologues known for their message of empowerment to women and for their frank discussion of female sexuality.

Written in 1996 by Eve Ensler, they draw on interviews with more than 200 women, from young girls to an 86-year-old woman.

The resulting monologues speak of women’s experiences – sexuality, abuse, love, birth, desire, fear, need, pleasure – and the need to speak of them with freedom and courage.

When they were first staged in Malta over 10 years ago, The Vagina Monologues had caused a sensation. But are they still as relevant? Internationally, the answer is a resounding yes.

Since their first staging in 1996, the Monologues have gone from theatre-piece to worldwide social movement.

Performed in 140 countries in 50 languages, actresses, personalities and singers such as Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Idina Menzel and Oprah Winfrey, have also delivered the Monologues, bringing widespread acclaim to the taboo-busting pieces.

In 1998, Ensler launched V-Day, a global non-profit movement that has raised over €88 million for groups working to end violence against women and girls.

In 2011, V-Day, with support from Unicef, opened the City of Joy, a new community for women survivors of gender violence, female genital mutilation and honour killings in Congo (officially the worst place to be a woman).

City of Joy provides Congolese women with an opportunity to benefit from group therapy, self-defence training, comprehensive sexuality education (covering HIV/AIDS, family planning), economic empowerment, dance, theatre, ecology and horticulture, helping them to be self sufficient and self supportive. Created from this vision, Congolese women now run, operate and direct City of Joy themselves. The City of Joy celebrated its first graduating class in February 2012.

There is a deeper underlying message which is also relevant to the younger generation

In 2012 she founded One Billion Rising, a global movement to end rape and sexual violence against women.

The ‘billion’ refers to the UN statistic that one in three women will be raped or beaten in their lifetime, which adds up to about one billion.

In 2012, the One Billion Rising campaign culminated in the biggest ever mass global action to end violence against women with tens of thousands of events held in more than 200 countries, in-cluding all 34 provinces of Afghanistan.

But, closer to home, there still remains a need for women’s empowerment. In Malta, until just a few years ago, sex education was virtually non-existent in Church schools and young girls could not speak about periods, sex, masturbation or desire without fear of punishment.

Much has now improved but, in Maltese, too, the widespread use of the term ‘vagina’ in a derogatory manner, suggests a silence on the subject that is inherent in the language itself.

I ask Brimmer if she feels that staging the play in English softens the impact? Would the piece have a different impact if staged in Maltese? Could she bring herself to get the audience to say the Maltese word for ‘vagina’? Brimmer seems hesitant. Then she shakes her head.

Clockwise from top: Faye Paris, Julia Calvert, Nicky Schembri and Paula Fleri-Soler.Clockwise from top: Faye Paris, Julia Calvert, Nicky Schembri and Paula Fleri-Soler.

“There I go, I’ve just proved it. Having had a strict convent school upbringing, I just can’t bring myself to utter the word – the taboo still exists. But I have no problem saying it in English and I even got audiences to chant the ‘c’ word when I per-formed in The Vagina Monologues 10 years ago.”

But The Vagina Monologues are not only about gender violence and shock factor.

There is a deeper underlying message which is also relevant to the younger generation.

“We think of the current generation as particularly liberated and empowered – but how much do young girls really know about their vagina, other than treating it as a sexual organ? How much do they really give their vagina its due importance and respect? How many have actually taken a mirror and looked at it?”

In an important passage in the Monologues, the vagina is compared to the heart which, like the vagina, is capable of sacrifice, forgiving and repairing, expanding, aching, stretching and bleeding. It is also referred to as a blossom, a flower.

Elsewhere in the Monologues, women are referred to as “the essential life energy on the planet”. Small wonder that the Monologues have struck – and keep striking - such a chord.

Staged always in a simple manner – the actresses sit on stools, scripts in hand – the spotlight is on the words, the emotions stirred. It is the telling of real stories by real women.

Often, during rehearsals the actresses break down. “They get to you – they are so much more than just words or experiences. Some are funny, others are sad, but they touch unexplored emotions and leave them raw. After I had performed them some stayed with me for a long time.”

Perhaps it is because Ensler knew her subject well, herself having been sexually abused by her father for several years, she has suffered a miscarriage and, since the Monologues, she has also survived uterine cancer.

Does Brimmer feel she will have a different viewpoint with the advantage of 10 years more maturity since the first staging?

“I think they will touch any generation and not just women. Men, too. They are fathers, lovers and husbands. I think that the Monologues always stir you in some way... be it sexually or emotionally!”

The cast for the production includes Julia Calvert, Faye Paris, Paula Fleri-Soler, Nicky Schembri and Steffi Thake.

The Vagina Monologues run between March 6 and 8 and 13 and 15 at Palazzo Pereira, Valletta. The production is part of Il-Mara, an initiative by the Azad Foundation towards the empowerment of women and women’s issues.

www.facebook.com/pages/The-Vagina-Monologues

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.