Starting powerful conversations

Since 1996, when The Vagina Monologies was first performed in New York, thousands of women, and vagina-friendly men, have been inspired or empowered to become "vagina warriors", to fight against the rising tide of violence perpetrated against women.

Stripped of every right, subjected to genital mutilation, gang-raped in parking lots, murdered to satisfy family shame, disfigured as a payback, or simply disappeared. Powerless in the face of brutal husbands or companions, testosterone-laden thugs, archaic cultural practices or warring families, tribes, sects and countries.

Now, thanks to Eve Ensler and her very famous play, women everywhere are claiming back their rights, their bodies and their lives.



The Vagina Monologues tells the intimate stories of hundreds of women she interviewed about their sexual experiences, their feelings, themselves and their bodies. What began as a one-night affair with Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close and Whoopi Goldberg, has now played in 120 countries and 45 languages.

Back then, women rarely spoke about or even had the time to look at their vaginas. All that has changed. Now, woman everywhere, are able to talk openly about issues they face. And work powerfully together to turn back the tide.

Along the way Eve Ensler has found that serving a higher purpose is the key to happiness. That your Mr. Alligator moment (a character she invented to rescue her from the hands of a brutal and sexually abusive alcoholic father), shows up, not for you, but for someone else, who is saved from a similar fate as a result by the collective efforts of a movement that you started. Which indirectly heals that damaged part of you.

And which comes about by giving away what you most want.

So here is a workshop to explore how you too might start an important conversation, about which few dare to speak, and unleash powerful symbolic forces. So the core idea goes global.

1. What do you go weeks, months or even years without noticing, that is really important to you, and could be more center stage in your life.
2. What really important conversation do you need to start so it becomes your "important thing", of equal or more importance to the Vagina Monologues?
3. Make a list of all the common/uncommon names for your "important thing."
4. What powerful symbolic social/theatrical/physical event could you stage which ensure your conversation becomes contagious?
5. To be really happy, how can you give away what you want the most?
6. How do you keep going, when, by pursuing your life's most important work, you become an outcast in your community, exiled and slandered for daring to do something vitally important?
7. What for you could become your most fabulous Mr. Alligator moment, which may not rescue you from your troubles at the time, but when the day arrives, rescues others, and in the process, heals the broken part in you too?
8. What powerful symbols could you employ that summon others to your cause?