Premier of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES

[Big Booger]

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES is precisely what its name suggests a series of stories, based on interviews, in which women talk about the most secret part of their bodies. But it's a great deal more. The play shows so triumphantly that by opening up such a subject, you can also reveal a whole range of human experience. Using intelligence, integrity and comparison, Eve Ensler has created not just one of the best shows in the world today but the most morally serious.



In THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, Eve Ensler has given voice to a chorus of lusty, outrageous, poignant, brave, highly original and thoroughly human stories. Based on interviews with a diverse group of women the play brazenly explores the humor, power, pain, wisdom, outrage, mystery and excitement hidden in vaginas.

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES is alternately hilarious and deeply moving. But as important as the serious monologues are -- humor is the show's real strength. Covering issues from sexual abuse, first lesbian experiences, indignities of pelvic exams, women's dreams and desires, orgasms, sex, marriage, infidelity, childbirth and womanhood, the play deftly combines drama and comedy.

The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues in Japanese

[AssKissinger]

Read it. Wildly overrated. Didn't love it or hate it. It was boring. I can use the word cunt too. So what? It's right up the alley of a boring liberal who is really the dullest kind of conservative because it makes them feel cutting edge. Totally suburban.

[Taro Toporific]

Read it.

Read?
Sheeeeee-it. It's a stand-up comedy MONOLOGUE. Reading it as book is silly. Like any comedy act it's not the joke, it's way it's told. For the The Vagina Monologues: It ain't the meat, it's motion.

[AssKissinger]

She published it as a book. Not meant to be read?

[Cubed]

My boss went to see the Vagina Monologues recently and came into work all in yer face "men have to learn that women are not objects", and "the men in the audience looked extremely uncomfortable when one of the readers talked about the Croation rape camps ... "

I told her that if I took her to an anti-capitalism rally where they show pictures of 12 year olds working in factory for inhumane bosses she might feel extremely uncomfortable too.

She said I was missing the point.

Blagh.

[AssKissinger]

the men in the audience looked extremely uncomfortable when one of the readers talked about the Croation rape camps

The men looked uncomfortable. People are always projecting certain looks onto people mimicking what they think they should be feeling. It damn well may have made the women more uncomfortable than the men. Fuck if I feel guilty for some shit that happen in Europe. It's too bad feminsim and the left in general have such sorry writers to depend on.

[Taro Toporific]

She published it as a book. Not meant to be read?

Hey, you can't fault a person for trying to make a buck but....
Reading most comic monologues is worse than reading the braille edition of BARE magazine.


As far as your assessment of the Vagina Monologues as "Totally suburban"---Dang. Come to think of it AK, you're quite right of course.

Soccer Moms were the target audience when I saw it done in the Chicago Apollo Theater although large part of the audience was black and yelling in extra things during the performance. It ought to be very funny how The Vagina Monologues translate into Japanese, hee, hee.

[AssKissinger]

It won't make sense in Japanese because J-chicks don't have hang-ups about their cunts.

[NeoNecroNomiCron]

Where to buy the tickets? I was thinking of getting tickets for a friend... Just know Idea where to buy them...

[GomiGirl]

It won't make sense in Japanese because J-chicks don't have hang-ups about their cunts.

Not all foreign chicks have either AK...

[AssKissinger]

It won't make sense in Japanese because J-chicks don't have hang-ups about their cunts.

Not all foreign chicks have either AK...

Point taken and understood. I never said otherwise. It's just the material in that play isn't gonna be relevent to Japanese women. However it was a Japanese woman who loaned me the book sooooo.....

[Taro Toporific]

It won't make sense in Japanese because J-chicks don't have hang-ups about their cunts.

Ohhhh, I got a bad feeling about this "translation by committee".


Getting 'Vagina' across to Japanese audiences
Yomiuri / June 24
Taking The Vagina Monologues to different countries is always a tricky business, in no small part because of the need for a very good translation...
..... Keiko Itoh, a London-based translator who the show's executive producers chose to take on the job.
"I haven't been living in Japan for a long time, so for me that was the challenge: To make into Japanese what I already understood, and to...transform that into a Japanese context."
The project was a change of pace for Itoh, a historian by training, whose works are mostly historical or economic...the most problematic part to translate for Itoh came at the very beginning of the play when a list of names and nicknames for the vagina are read out.
"I lived quite a sheltered life in Japan, and I didn't know all these words in Japanese to begin with," she said with a laugh...
Fortunately, help was at hand. The translations were periodically read out loud by a committee that included Itoh and other Japanese women working or studying in London. The committee would then discuss what worked and flowed well and what didn't. The committee also included younger women who would teach Itoh the latest relevant additions to the lexicon.
Fundamentally, she found, there was very little that needed to be changed, including the humor, for the play to suit a Japanese audience.
One of her translation decisions didn't get through: To literally translate the title.
"I personally felt it was very important for Japanese to be able to say (their own) word for 'vagina,' not having to use a foreign word" she says. "To me, it was a reflection of the Japanese attitude toward things like that, because they can't even say it in their own language."

However, the Japanese producers felt it a bit too provocative to use for the first performance--reasoning that Itoh eventually agreed with--and instead decided to keep the original English title, written in katakana....

[Big Booger]

It won't make sense in Japanese because J-chicks don't have hang-ups about their cunts.

Ohhhh, I got a bad feeling about this "translation by committee".


Getting 'Vagina' across to Japanese audiences
Yomiuri / June 24
Taking The Vagina Monologues to different countries is always a tricky business, in no small part because of the need for a very good translation...
..... Keiko Itoh, a London-based translator who the show's executive producers chose to take on the job.
"I haven't been living in Japan for a long time, so for me that was the challenge: To make into Japanese what I already understood, and to...transform that into a Japanese context."
The project was a change of pace for Itoh, a historian by training, whose works are mostly historical or economic...the most problematic part to translate for Itoh came at the very beginning of the play when a list of names and nicknames for the vagina are read out.
"I lived quite a sheltered life in Japan, and I didn't know all these words in Japanese to begin with," she said with a laugh...
Fortunately, help was at hand. The translations were periodically read out loud by a committee that included Itoh and other Japanese women working or studying in London. The committee would then discuss what worked and flowed well and what didn't. The committee also included younger women who would teach Itoh the latest relevant additions to the lexicon.
Fundamentally, she found, there was very little that needed to be changed, including the humor, for the play to suit a Japanese audience.
One of her translation decisions didn't get through: To literally translate the title.
"I personally felt it was very important for Japanese to be able to say (their own) word for 'vagina,' not having to use a foreign word" she says. "To me, it was a reflection of the Japanese attitude toward things like that, because they can't even say it in their own language."

However, the Japanese producers felt it a bit too provocative to use for the first performance--reasoning that Itoh eventually agreed with--and instead decided to keep the original English title, written in katakana....

Read that article today.. Interesting.. I wonder if they have a word for pearl tongue?
LOL

[cstaylor]

I told her that if I took her to an anti-capitalism rally where they show pictures of 12 year olds working in factory for inhumane bosses she might feel extremely uncomfortable too.

She said I was missing the point.

You were missing the point. The point is that going to see that play made her feel good, while going to the anti-capitalism rally would make her feel bad.

[nullpointer]

[quote="cstaylor"]...while going to the anti-capitalism rally would make her feel bad. ]

What a *cough* cunt *cough*

[tokyojoe]

The "Manko Monologues"?

[Taro Toporific]

The "Manko Monologues"?

Za Manko Monogatari

[AssKissinger]

[Caustic Saint]

Every time I see this title I have the same thought - why has no enterprising porm producer made "The Vagina Dialogues"?

[GomiGirl]

Every time I see this title I have the same thought - why has no enterprising porm producer made "The Vagina Dialogues"?

While at it they could go for a whole Vagina Vox Pop... maybe even Japan Today would publish it!!