Local University Cancels Controversial Play, Gains National Attention
Several national political commentary sites from the conservative side of the ideological fence have picked up on a story from Southwestern University in Georgetown. (Which I might add is quite a lovely campus. It's a shame the hallowed halls of Texas's oldest university would ring with such controversy! I do declare!)
Playwright Eve Ensler's notoriously frank feminist stage play The Vagina Monologues has long been a lightning rod for heated political discourse since it premiered off-Broadway in 1996. In my hometown, a local university production courted controversy by purchasing a big ole billboard advertising the play on the busiest stretch of I-10 running smack dab through the middle of town. I recall preachers saying this was tantamount to becoming Soddom and/or Gommorah (so much for subtlety,)
Provocative seems to be the modus operandi of the play and its producers everywhere. It usually plays well on university campuses full of doe-eyed "activists" hell bent on fixing the world from all its patriarchal problems. Yet in recent times, with the level of revisionist radical rhetoric on campuses hitting a feverish pitch, the Monologues simply aren't controversial enough to some activists, it might even be rooted in, among other things, colonialism (I'm not making this up.)
At Southwestern, where The Vagina Monologues have been staged for several years, the play has been replaced by a new work called We Are Women, which is being presented starting April 16. Comments from the new play's organizer Rachel Arco published recently in the student newspaper The Megaphone have attracted the attention of conservative sites like the late William F. Buckley's standard-bearer National Review Online, but also Campus Reform and Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller:
“This performance will largely be done with works by women of color. In doing so, it will be more representative of the experience of women, rather than only offering the white woman’s experience...it brings to light the importance of acknowledging the dangers of gender construction, the importance of normalizing women’s bodies, the importance of intersectionality."
Inter-what? I don't even known what that word means. It could have something to do with traffic control but I could be totally mistaken.
For those news-junkies seeking an alternative to crime stories and the presidential sturm-und-drang, pine no longer. What was once thought impossible has been achieved: making one of the most controversial theatrical works of the last decade of the twentieth century seem antiquated and inadequate in today's hyper-charged political climate, both on-campus and off.
NOTE: We wanted to include a link where readers can purchase tickets to the upcoming performances but there was no link to any ticket information in the original article. You're on your own.
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