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Coast team to produce Vagina Monologues

Vagina Monologues is coming back to the Sunshine Coast.
monologues
Jennie Biltek is one of the local women bringing Eve Ensler’s ground-breaking play to Gibsons.

Vagina Monologues is coming back to the Sunshine Coast. 

First produced locally more than 15 years ago by the then-Women’s Resources Society (now the Community Resources Society), American playwright Eve Ensler’s ground-breaking episodic play will be mounted on the Coast by the director-producer team of Kim Fenton and Jennie Biltek. 

“Last year, someone came to me and said, ‘I’d love to see the Vagina Monologues here,’” Fenton told Coast Reporter. “Jennie and I talked about it and we got the rights.” 

The play will be performed Saturday, March 7 at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons. 

Written by Ensler in 1996, the work is described on her website as “a wildly divergent gathering of female voices, including a six-year-old girl, a septuagenarian New Yorker, a vagina workshop participant, a woman who witnesses the birth of her granddaughter, a Bosnian survivor of rape, and a feminist who is happy to have found a man ‘who likes to look at it.’” 

In 1998, two years after it was first performed, Ensler helped launch the concept of V-Day, a non-profit movement that licenses the play to be produced every February or early March as a community benefit. Since then, it has raised more than $100 million for groups working to end violence against women and support female victims of violence. 

“We’re working with Sunshine Coast Community Services,” said Fenton. “All the money we make is going to their Together Against Violence project.” 

While the hour-long play has a set number of monologues performed by a dozen or more women, each year Ensler writes another monologue that “puts focus on a certain group of marginalized people who are experiencing violence,” Fenton said. In past years, that has included the rape victims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, or the Second World War “comfort women” who were forced into prostitution for Japanese soldiers. “This year, the monologue focuses on trans-women,” Fenton said. “It’s a very powerful piece. It talks about trans- and bi-women, and transgendered women.” 

Added Biltek: “Gender is a spectrum now and in this production, we’re really going to trust that those people who come to audition know how to self-identify, whether they identify as a trans-woman or non-binary or they identify as a cis-woman, whatever on that spectrum is true for them. The other thing is there’s greater awareness and sensitivity around ensuring that this production is diverse not only within that gender spectrum but also within the spectrum of women of colour, Indigenous women, women of differing abilities, spectrum of age as well.” 

Auditions will be held on Saturday, Jan. 11, from 2 to 5 p.m., at Yoga by the Sea at 1055 Roberts Creek Rd. 

Men are also welcomed to volunteer for the production, fundraising and other aspects, Biltek said. “We are in need of awesome people.” More information is available on Facebook at Vagina Monologues – Sunshine Coast BC, @sscmonologues on Instagram and via email at sscmonologues@gmail.com. Ticket details will be announced later.