"Few people know that New Orleans is the vagina of America. Few would suggest it. “It is fertile. It's a delta. And everyone wants to party there,” explains Eve Ensler, activist, feminist icon - and the author of The Vagina Monologues. Never one to act on a small stage when a bigger one would do, last weekend she turned the New Orleans Superdome into the Superlove - a two-day global event to mark the tenth anniversary of her V-Day movement, the campaign to stop violence against women which she founded on the back of her play. Not everyone got it. “When Eve told me New Orleans was the vagina of America, I was like, oh sweet Jesus,” says the actress Kerry Washington, putting her head in her hands. “Sometimes I think, Eve, do you really want to go there. Really? But now I get it. Its sexy, everybody loves it - but when it has problems nobody wants to know.”
Ensler has been coming to New Orleans for more than two years, working with local women's groups. With benefit performances for V-Day taking place in more than 80 countries, the anniversary could have been staged anywhere, but Ensler chose New Orleans because of its recent unhappy past. “New Orleans has been a war zone for women.” And, yes, because New Orleans is the vagina of the most powerful nation in the world. It looks that way on the map she demonstrates, making a little vagina shape between her thumb and forefinger. She has written a new piece to christen the event called Welcome to the Wetlands."
Times: The Vagina Monologues turn ten by Karen Bartlett, April 15, 2008
Art: New Orleans, 2007, Margaret Morrison
Categories:
, Alternative, Isms, Urbanities, Women
Related Articles
