By Melissa Benton
By Melissa Benton
A large vagina smiles at the groups of people making their way into the lobby of the Digital Library Auditorium.
Irene Hernandez stands by with a Polaroid camera, offering to take a picture of these audience members and the large smiling vagina.
Some smile and refuse, but many nod their heads, and cuddle up close to the friendly vagina.
It’s been 10 years since “The Vagina Monologues” was first performed.
Riverside City College’s Feminists Unite wanted to ring in the 10-year anniversary by performing it themselves.
“The Vagina Monologues” was written by Eve Ensler, and is still a strong play with many groundbreaking and taboo topics.
It mentions things like exploring the vagina, pubic hair and orgasms.
The show also provides many interesting facts, comical moments and various forms of artistic expression.
While Feminists Unite’s performance of the play was full of effort, it was not the up to par performance it could have been.
Some performers lacked enthusiasm. Nerves were probably an issue with some, but others just looked bored on stage.
The lack of microphones made some of the performers difficult to hear.
The most distracting choice was the fact that these monologues were not memorized.
Each woman held a script on stage, and would read straight from it, or would glance at it to get their lines.
It would force the audience members to become more aware of the script, rather than watching the performer and listening to the beautiful pieces being performed.
A few of the women did stand out in their performances.
Merry Mariano, Elyse Ewens, Amy Lopez and Sarah Mason were the four performers that were able to captivate the audience and make their point heard.
Mason especially won over the audience with her performance of “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy.”
It ended with Mason imitating the many different types of orgasms women have.
Mariano gave a breakthrough performance of “The Vagina workshop,” where a woman discovers herself through a vagina exploration class.
Ewens and Lopez both gave comical and well performed monologues with “Because He Liked to Look at It” and “My Angry Vagina.”
Feminists Unite obviously gave a performance that got the point across and made the audience think.
Audience members were given a program with information about the show, and a separate red paper with 27 devastatingly true facts about women around the world.
The information provided at this event was overflowing, but it was still lacking in the performance area.
Feminists Unite gave a good try, but could have used a little more rehearsal time to make sure the light cues matched with the show.
That time could have also been used to memorize the monologues.
RCC’s presentation of “The Vagina Monologues” made a good impact on the audience and will continue to inform others as it is constantly performed.
“The Vagina Monologues” will always offer wisdom and inspiration to women everywhere.
It will continue on for many years to come and be proudly performed by women wanting to give some knowledge and good times to the women of tomorrow.