San Francisco is the home of the premier of Eve Ensler’s new play: The Good Body. Like The Vagina Monologues, this play is a series of monologues. Only, this time, Eve is addressing the entire female body image in general. I’ve heard some of the monologues – they are absolutely fantastic. I strongly encourage anyone who can to attend; it should be a powerful play.
Whether undergoing Botox or living under burkhas, women of all cultures and backgrounds feel compelled to change the way they look in order to fit in with their particular culture, in order to be accepted, in order to be good. In The Good Body, Ensler explores their experiences with monologues representing women from Bombay to Beverly Hills. Delivering narratives collected in locker rooms, cell blocks, boardrooms, and bedrooms, Ensler frames their stories with her own personal journey from a self-loathing teenager to a (sometimes) self-accepting adult. Interspersed throughout are riotous excerpts from Ensler’s lifelong dialogue with her belly-a sassy and conniving antagonist in its own right.
i remeber her at the nuyorican’s poet cafe (NYC)before she hit it big. lots of people where influeced by her.
there were four poets called the pussy poets that appeared on the poets scene after that: they are kind of forgotten now: they did more the spoke word thing: they sounded good: they would be a nice background chorus to Ensler’s work. but her stuff is too egotistical to reach that level of “Nietzschian” standard.
i think art has become too first person: we don’t see quality third person…or multiple voices comming out of Ensler’s generation. But Ensler does achieve in character building: but i am never convinced of authenticity of the different characters. I would rather have actors do her monologues. what offends me in her work is not the vulgarity, but rather, a deep rooted selfishness and unbalanced narcissism. It does not “sample” all aspects of womens lives, but rather, an over biased perspective. But regardless, Ensler is fun to hear.
The photo on my blog is of Anne Waldman who is a latter day Beat: she did alot of the spokenword stuff a while ago. but she is contrasted to Ensler’s dialogs in that Anne has a more “Grand” first person persona…kind of the Pushkin of american feminism. Discovering the collective female voice of this generation is a complexity and intersects with what whitman attempted: the seeing of things in the grand view of nature.
to be and to sing inside the very movements of life.
within the very movements of the masses. electric masses each a body electric.
but is this accomplished with the characters Ensler builds. does the personification of body parts bring us to a post human aesthetic? I think that Ensler is great on different levels, but not a historical voice. For that we still wait for Anne Waldmans successor, whoever she maybe: and hopefully she can write a play that has a chorus in it.
Voices on cellphone and blog enteries will slip into a poetic finding of poetic voice. how all these devices and electronics become the instruments of a composition will require trendous vision.
stef
Thanks for posting this. Dav and I will be going…although there are only 2nd balcony seats left for the opening night. Can’t wait!
Fantastic Mie! I’m not bothering to go opening night because i wanted good seats and i procrastinated too long. Tehehe.
Stefanos – you’re entitled to your opinion, but please realize that Eve is a dear friend of mine. Knowing her very well, i do not see any of her pieces as egotistical; quite the opposite. Remember what Eve does: she takes voices from people who typically don’t have a voice in contemporary culture and highlights them. She uses this to create a play and uses the plays to raise millions of dollars worldwide to fight violence against women. She may have a known brand, which is what you might object to, but her actions are very welcoming and engaging.
The authenticity of the pieces is very real. Not only have i met a lot of Eve’s subjects, but once the pieces are written, the subjects often hear them and they resonate so acutely with those people. She never purports to speak for all women; in fact, she vehemently argues that she does not. She speaks for the women that she has interviewed. Many women identify with the characters, but not all. She’s highlighting voices, not trying to tell us what all women think.
Eve is also a very good friend of ours and the last thing she is is egotistical. Our family has known her since she was in high school and what she personally has endured and turned around to make others uderstand the need to STOP THE VIOLENCE TOWARDS WOMEN is nothing short of incredible. She is determined and focused, creative and lovely and we should all count our blessings that her plight is so real!
Eve is also a very good friend of ours and the last thing she is is egotistical. Our family has known her since she was in high school and what she personally has endured and turned around to make others uderstand the need to STOP THE VIOLENCE TOWARDS WOMEN is nothing short of incredible. She is determined and focused, creative and lovely and we should all count our blessings that her plight is so real!
Eve is also a very good friend of ours and the last thing she is is egotistical. Our family has known her since she was in high school and what she personally has endured and turned around to make others uderstand the need to STOP THE VIOLENCE TOWARDS WOMEN is nothing short of incredible. She is determined and focused, creative and lovely and we should all count our blessings that her plight is so real!
Just stumbled across this site while searching for info on The Good Body…so hello to you all!
I just returned home from tonight’s performance at ACT.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
So deeply personal. So sound and smart and savvy.
I’ve been a fan of Eve for years – I helped put on the first V-Day College Initiative Show and produced it subsequently. I wrote about it as a critic in South Africa. I had the opportunity to meet Eve several times when I lived in New York.
I appreciate what Stefanos is expressing – I’ve often enjoyed the ensemble performances of The Vagina Monologues more than I have Eve’s (but, by the time I saw Eve do it, I’d seen a bunch of other people do it a bunch of times).
With the Good Body, however, it seems to me that Eve’s performance is VITAL to the production overall. It’s about her. Sure, yes, it’s about other people; but whichever reviewer said this was a play “about the rest of us” totally missed the boat. The reason it’s so resonant is that it’s so specific, so personal, so much about how Eve moves through the world.
I took my cousin, a 38-year-old man and his mother, a 70-year-old woman with me. I’m a 24-year-old woman. Elder cousin and I walked out of the theater jubilant and feeling deeply connected. The younger one was in a state of shock.
So, hey, this is someone’s blog. Hi Danah Boyd, thanks for sharing your blog. 😉