The Vagina Monologues
by Eve Ensler
Produced by Bad Quarto Productions, February 2011.
Cast
Amanda Noel Allen
Rachel Gabel
Danielle Guy
Maria Hart
Kimberly Lenz
Elizabeth Lodato
Jocelynn Murphy
Elizabeth Rentfro
Stephanie Tschetter
Crew
Director .... Tony Tambasco
Asst. Director .... Katy Mulvaney
In February 2011, Bad Quarto Productions teamed up with the New Directions Center of Staunton, VA to present Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues as part of Ensler's VDay campaign. It's incredibly hard for me, being male, to say anything new or intelligent about Vagina Monologues other than it is a very good play, an done in support of a very good cause. I can, however, tell you something about what made our process different.
Following Tiffany Stern's description of the early modern rehearsal process in Making Shakespeare, the actresses who participated in this project were left largely to their own devices to learn their roles. They were given two weeks to learn their parts, met once with myself and Katy Mulvaney for individual rehearsals, and we rehearsed tops, tails, and transitions of each piece once as a group, but none of us saw the entire show until our performance. While we cannot know how the early modern performance process worked, this production of Vagina Monologues was fresher and more immediate than any I have seen in my travels.