"We can do it with this text": Utilizing the Vagina Monologues Internationally

I am submitting this article to be published in an academic compilation of essays regarding the Vagina Monologues. I would love feedback, and if the formatting is too messed up here, let me know and I will e-mail you a word document.


“We can do it with this text” :
Utilizing The Vagina Monologues Internationally
Jennifer R. McKenzie

INTRODUCTION

I am constantly on the move, hurtling through foreign currencies, new flavors and languages, and I am not allowed to return to the U.S. for a year. The constant in my life: The Vagina Monologues. The words I am learning: vágina, paparoocha, chong claud, pichka, fannie, coño, choot, and yoni. The terrain I am passing through: Mexico, England, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, Thailand, Cambodia, India, and South Africa. Having been passionately involved in V-Day for four years at Willamette University, I am now traveling the world documenting The Vagina Monologues’ international presence. Everywhere, participants and audience members tell me they have experienced magic, that they feel a part of positive, “mad hysterical energy,” as one V-Day actress named Rupa told me in Thailand and Jelena in Serbia echoed, “I don’t know how to explain it- there was a lot of magic surrounding it”.
What has been most surprising and inspiring throughout my experiences are the innovative strategies diverse communities are utilizing to indigenize The Vagina Monologues within their cultural contexts. V-Day activists around the world are mobilizing; they are seeking out new experiences, and making the text relevant to themselves and their communities. Actresses on every continent are embracing perceived universalities, empathizing with differences, finding solidarity and adapting where necessary. They are using The Vagina Monologues as a tool to answer their local needs.
V-Day a fallibly human movement, and could never express the experiences of all women. Given this reality, what is crucial is that we contribute to its evolution and that it inspires our own storytelling and actions. There is much that can be critiqued. Yet this is not how those involved relate to it, and in spite of this, the play has a tangible international presence that is expanding every year. These ‘vagina warriors’ are performing in cowsheds with a borrowed couch in rural France; in restaurants; touring in a Roma caravan; in hotels, birthday parties, public parks, girls leadership trainings, malls, women’s shelters, cinemas, women’s prisons and cafés; in SOS hotline trainings: at universities; at antifascist festivals, among disabled groups and alongside refugee medical services; at elderly homes, among NGOs, and on beaches in Croatia.
While allowing for constructive examining of how V-Day can become more inclusive, we also owe it to these remarkable organizers to respect their agency, creativity and bravery. V-Day is not a dogma but an invitation, and it belongs to those who choose to utilize it. Eve Ensler addressed this shared ownership during the European V-Day Organizers Workshop in London:
“When we love something, we want to believe it’s ours: because it gives us value, and it gives us identity, and it gives us purpose. And what I am being taught constantly in this movement is to give it away. To give it away, to get out of the way. Serve it up …You can say, this is my movement, this is my thing, and you’ll keep it very small, and it will be your thing. But your objective should be that as many people get to be involved in V-Day, and to want people to come and take it away from you! Come and take it! … Spread it to your community, be bolder than me, be ahead of me.”
Wherever they are staging events, activists are as bold and innovative as Eve could wish. They take what they need while creatively molding it to suit their context. Instead of asking how a movment like V-Day can possibly appeal to such a breadth of international women, I demonstrate that appeal by examining and seeking to understand the creative strategies and functions it satisfies for international organizers. Their words and experiences highlight the usefulness of V-Day as a strategic tool. In this paper, I examine how productions in three locations indigenized The Vagina Monologues, and demonstrate its effectiveness in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic and at the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico, in sustaining and reenergizing weary feminist activists in the former Yugoslavia, and in creating a rare Thai and expatriate community in Thailand.
Their strategies are unique, but their creativeness is so pervasive as to be common. These examples serve to highlight the poignant possibility of our expanding transnational sphere, which Valentine Moghadam describes as, “Globalization has in fact brought social movements together across borders in a ‘transnational public sphere,’ as real as well as conceptual space in which movement organizations interact, contest each other, and learn from each other” (Moghadam 4). Transnational feminism approaches like V-Day can only grow through learning from eachother through efforts like these in Mexico, the Balkans and Thailand.


MEXICO CITY



‘My vagina is going crazy in fact…
It’s mad already…
AIDS has invaded its deepest, sweetest, most secret places
…My vagina is dying of AIDS…
Are politicians watching?
Do they know this?
Do they know they are diminished every time a vagina perishes?
…This great army can wage a war against vagina injustice
….Chronicle the story of vaginas
Learn the history of vaginas
… Uplift the dignity of vaginas
Hold it high for the world to see
That the vagina, like the penis, is human”

(Poem in Vagina Monologues Session
World AIDS Conference ‘08 Mexico City)

In the conference room packed with international HIV/AIDS activists, the early August rain was deafening. We were there for The Vagina Monologues session of the XVII International AIDS Conference. The reading of select international Monologues and open mic seemed disorganized, with the organizers mispronouncing author Eve Ensler’s name. I braced myself for a flop. Instead, I was privy to an inspiring and intimate conversation. As one of the organizers gushed afterwards, “I’ve never seen this happen with a hundred strangers before.” Leading activists piled informally on the steps--some HIV-positive, one held her sleeping infant-- and the microphone was passed amongst them with care. Many were hearing the stories for the first time. As the presentation proceeded, the emotions inspired in them and the audience were palpable.
Although The Vagina Monologues has been shown over 5,000 times in the last nine years there, and is performed an impressive twelve times weekly in Mexico City alone, what happened here was unique. The professional production has put the word vagina into daily discourse , sparked controversy, focused on the missing women of Juarez, appealed to a massive public and become a rite of passage for female celebrities . Yet what we saw that monsoon-drenched afternoon was not acting. As one participant said, “this was more authentic because it was real women. We’re not actors, we’re just women, women who happen to be in the Women’s Movement, or the HIV movement.” The words rang with this authenticity, forged instant community, and provided a platform for dialogue about the intersections of the pandemic with sexual violence. Activists synthesized The Vagina Monologues to illuminate their cause and needs. They used it to address overlapping issues within the HIV/AIDS movement such as speaking about taboos, breaking stigmatized silence in this ‘silent epidemic’ and validating individual experiences while applying them to community action. The connection and similarity to The Vagina Monologues is apparent in their goals:
“Women’s voices are central to our success in identifying and ensuring rights-based responses to the epidemic … It is a space for us to … bring forward women’s voices-old and new, diverse and unified- to comment, shape, critique and respond to current and future interventions responding to women’s realities risks and needs. We aim to bring the voices from the margins to the center. We aim to trace our history as a movement and to map our way forward.” (Feminization of violence and feminization of the epidemic)
Although there were more attendees than seats, The Vagina Monologues was utilized to create metaphotical space, and facilitated the kinds of conversations activists both hungered for and sought to use in their own work. Seodhna Keown described her experience at the session in a paper titled, ‘The Feminization of HIV-a call to Action,’ saying it created, “a safe space for women and men to share, opened up a discussion and dialogue about our own personal experiences of our bodies, our relationships, our pain and our joy. I witnessed an incredible community of women supporting one another to share their intimate experiences on being a woman!” She sees The Vagina Monologues as a resource, and was inspired to replicate this kind of tool in her work with sexual health education. Kristan Schoultz, Director of the Global Coalition of Women and AIDS called for more creative strategies like The Vagina Monologues to, “vibrate with the richness of women’s experienes, and offer a vibrant demostration of how different the response can be, when women take the lead” (Schoultz 4).
The organizers of The Vagina Monologues reading had hoped to inspire activists to creative responses not only through witnessing the texts’ potential, but through then breaking our own silence. After the reading, tears and laughter drowned by the rain, the emcee said, “ I think maybe we should just begin to tell each other stories … We’re at this conference to talk about breaking taboos- that’s really what The Vagina Monologues is about. It’s about relating what happens to us in our lives, and speaking words that haven’t been spoken.” Even then I doubted. Who would stand in front of hundreds of strangers, walk to the front of a cavernous room and speak into the waiting microphone? There was a mere moment of tense silence. And then the stories began to pour forth. Their power and poignancy drowned the thunder and created a different kind of electricity. Though many languages were spoken, we were sharing the same conversation.
Some were stories of affirmation, “I want to encourage everybody to keep a vision of the pleasure that talking vaginas can have. And that people want to hate you for. I want to assure you, that at age sixty-seven, my vagina is talking to other vaginas and having a pretty damn good time!” One woman spoke about inseminating herself to create her son. Others shared about their empowerment through short skirts and their joy with multi-orgasms, “You cannot reach that without empowering yourself, and feeling that your body and your pleasure belongs to you.” Activists also shared their pain and survival through molestations and injustices,
“While in exile, at the age of five I was raped by a neighbor in Swaziland. We moved countries. And went to South Africa, and I was raped at thirteen. And I had to leave the country and go to Zambia because I was raped. And I was raped again at fourteen. I went to a theological seminary to study to be a priest, and I was raped at twenty. And then, I was raped by the former Deputy Director of South Africa. First he said I wore a miniskirt. And I folded my skirt in such a way that it enticed him. And then he said it was because I wore a cloth that nearly all women in Africa wear- to the bed, to the market. But on top of that, his lawyer said that my rapes at five, and thirteen, and fourteen and twenty were my sexual history, and proved that I could not tell the difference between consensual sex and rape. I refused to give in to it. Everyday I have to keep reminding myself that I did nothing wrong. And I have to keep fighting the fight!”
One activist told her sister’s story of rape and subsequent crusade to document sexual assault on Chilean university campuses. One young woman, appropriately named Lluvia (rain) told about using the The Vagina Monologues in a community project in Gueretero, México:
“We talked with many women from different groups, mothers, and young women. And it’s incredible how many want to talk … We can do it with this text, we can organize ourselves and our states, and our cities, and our countries … This session is an example. We have many women sharing very intimate things, and it’s only because of the text. It’s an invitation … When our vaginas start to get organizing, and to talk to each other, no one can stop them.”
The crowd applauded raucously. Another woman thanked those who shared: “I feel very fortunate to share this space with such powerful women. Even though they have suffered something I can’t comprehend in my head or my heart, they are still here fighting for all of us. I cried when I heard them.” The open mic had to be cut off, though participants were lined up to share their stories. They drifted into the hall speaking amongsts themselves. The stories in the text allowed their own stories to be shared, and then communally uplifted and validated.
This kind of intimate sharing and strategic use of The Vagina Monologues is an example of activists creatively applying the text to their cause. I have learned this year that there is no traditional or typical V-Day performance. This is highlighted even more in organizers’ informal use of The Vagina Monologues in the context of an international conference to create community, inspire alternate strategies and re-emphasize the interconectiveness of issues. Conference organizers suggested that, “Approaches that rest on the experiences of women and girls encourage and engage their participation in decision-making, and emphasize the importance of changing community attitides to counter gender inequality” (4). Initially I thought V-Day had been overdue in addressing HIV/AIDS and the health issues surrounding vaginas and violence against women. But after the session I realized it is even more powerful to have communities making the connection themselves. As one organizer emphasized, “We wanted to link the connection between violence against women as a major risk factor for AIDS- violence against women and rape. Especially now, in Darfur and the Congo - there are so many places where women are HIV positive because they were raped.” I imagine all of these diverse activists taking the lessons they shared at this session back to their countries, the breaking of silence expanding like ripples. As the organizer of the session said,
“I think it’s enormously powerful, and beautiful and fabulous and bold, and it creates a space. And it’s a space that can only expand.”


BALKANS
Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina



“[The Vagina Monologues] had great impact on women and communities, but also on activism. [V-Day] changed what activism means, it fulfills us in a different way”
Rada Boric

(Director Women’s Studies Center Zagreb, Croatia, Feminist Aunt and influential V-Day activist )

“It is an activisty way of doing The Vagina Monologues”

(Biljana (Lori) Stankovic Founder of NoviSad Lesbian Organization has been performing unofficially for ten years among diverse communities and informal settings)


Walking through stormy Sarajevo, I was stressing because I was lost and late to meet Nuna Zvizdic, the director of Zene Zenama , and long-time V-Day advocate. I walked through the gorgeous shrapnel-pitted and cemetery-ridden city, and after knocking on bemused neighbors doors, finally found her. Nuna held my eyes solemly while her reply was translated regarding why the The Vagina Monololgues and V-Day are significant to feminist work in the Balkan region: “They are very important because they are improving the development of strategy for women’s rights, and against violence against women. It’s one part of the strategy.” I asked her what she thought was the connection between art and activism. She gazed at me evenly, and responded, “Isn’t it the same thing? Activism is really the art of survival.”
The region of former Yugoslavia has many such survival artists and a strong Vagina Monologues presence. In many ways it is the V-Day Mesopotamia. Eve’s work with Bosnian women refugees sparked the flame that ignited The Vagina Monologues from theatre to a public movement. The Monologue ‘My Short Skirt’ was even adapted into a hit song in Croatia. As Rada Boric, the Director of Women’s Studies Center in Zagreb, Croatia and influential V-Day activist said, “-when you think [the play] might have been forbidden in many places like Kosovo, and then … after the bombing, to have ‘My Little Skirt’ being first on the top pop list- that somebody dares to play it! A pop song, in a war-torn Mostar or even Sarajevo…”
With numerous creative endeavors like these, the Balkans have embraced V-Day in Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. The recovering region is a dramatic backdrop for the play. As Serbian V-Day organizer Jelena Djordovic wrote in her article about the first official production in Belgrade: “Staging V-Day in this region, which was for years devastated by wars in former Yugoslavia, provided a metaphor for the possibility of bringing peace and coexistence of different cultures and religions. It was aimed at strengthening women’s solidarity and support and sending a strong political message demanding an end to violence against women.”
V-Day has fulfilled the even more unique function in this region of sustaining activists. The Vagina Monologues provided a powerfully positive outlet which fits and fulfills them. As a strategy, the play re-energizes even as it drains, unites activists in a shared commitment and collaboration, supports focus on their individual needs and encourages them to celebrate their efforts. In the words of Danijela Dugandzic, Bosnia and Herzegovina V-Day activist and Pitch-Wise founder , “We said, okay, we’re still feminists, and these are feminist issues, but we’ll do it through this venue, and form, and actually it’s the form that really suits us … we saw that we really enjoyed doing it through art.”
This artistic strategy sustains activists by allowing them to creatively focus on the range of female sexual experience, joy as well as injustice. It is affirmative and this focus on positivity is catalytic and refreshing. Sandra Ljubinkovic, the Director of Belgrade Anti Trafficking Center said, “I personally, and we at the ATC, are done with victim-hood, and victims, and this deep deep dark. We know that. We did that. We worked on that, but then we decided our strategy will be a bit different. It’s affirmative- it’s not light, but it’s affirmative.” As Jelena Djordovic, co-director of ATC, illuminated to me over exponential cups of coffee, tangerines and chocolate:
As a way of talking about violence against women, it is extremely powerful. It is a new way; it is talking about violence against women in a very powerful message- through art, through music, through dancing through play. We don’t play much around violence against women, it’s all very clear: ‘it’s difficult, its bleak’ … Battered women, bruised women, you know? And all that weight around it, it’s all heavy, it’s all dark. So The Vagina Monologues is something different, it is vibrant, it brings people together. It’s like a way of attracting people through dancing- and through beauty. And then bringing them to this very safe place where actually we can talk about very difficult issues … I think my dream is to use The Vagina Monologues to energize the activist community. Because people are really exhausted and drained, and disempowered.
V-Day further energizes activists through a renewed common commitment. Danijela describes the final moment of the play where they ask people who have suffered violence to stand:
“you have everyone standing up. And this is like an awful moment. I mean, I looked around, and I started crying, because you understand you live in this society that is so violent; and everyone understands that this is something that unites us. Like- fuck! I didn’t know that everyone is going to stand up! Every person in this room, 800 people has been or knows someone who has been through violence- this is awful, you know? And then people of course keep on standing when they say [remain standing] if you’re going to keep this from happening to women and girls.’”
As well as renewed dedication, Sandra describes the importance of sharing a common dream. She says a world without violence against women, without the need for The Vagina Monologues would be “a more contemplative world … But that’s like… a dream, yeah? And we have to dream, we have to dream. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible, we couldn’t be doing this… For activists this is very important. Because it is what sustains you, and also what drains you at the same time. Because you give so much” Jelena emphasizes how V-Day encourages this shared dream among activists:
“a shared idea about the world, and emphasizing dreaming about this world against violence against women. What would it look like? What would we do? And really feeling it! … Capturing that feeling- this is something we rarely have a chance to feel, because this doesn’t exist. We’re always trying to get it and its difficult- we come up again, we fall down again, because the struggle to create a safer world is very hard and there are many obstacles… V-Day is a really beautiful and magical experience which personally re-energizes me a lot.”
The movement and presence of The Vagina Monologues have re-energized many activists as it did Jelena, and allowed them to focus, for once, on their individual needs. For many activists hearing The Vagina Monologues was “revolutionary.” At local gatherings around the region Monologues were regularly read, “and this was beautiful, you know? It was really beautiful. Just among activists.” These readings inspired vagina workshops. At a conference in Thailand Balkan activists were relaxing after a long day and Rada was asked, ‘Teta (auntie), why don’t you do with us a vagina workshop?” She saus, “it started there, and they all loved it! … it started by talking and it was so wonderful I created a program…I really started softly…You can’t believe the impact. Whenever we have a women’s meeting in the smaller communities usually I do two Monologues for the women, in the night just sitting wherever we are. Women are falling apart… One day we might eventually know the impact of The Vagina Monologues.”
There can be power in preaching to the choir. Jelena points out that although many of the participants were veterans with issues of sexuality in their work, they were not engaging their own needs. The workshops facilitated more self-care which leads to greating sustainability of activist endeavors, they:
“reminded us how many of us learned about our bodies through violence rather than pleasure. But also how important it is to create these spaces where we talk about ourselves, our desires and our bodies. We had time to think about it, away from our daily work, activism and families. We reminded ourselves we need time to self-reflect, to look at ourselves more deeply. Because only by change in ourselves, can the change we envision for the world happen.”
Bosnian organizer Danijela similarly discovered that fellow activists:
“were never actually talking about themselves, or themselves through their vaginas …It is fun, but also every time we have this workshop, we find out that most of the women have suffered from violence, or know someone who has been through violence. … This is the shocking thing, you will always unfortunately find women who say, ‘it happened to me’ and it’s just… It is beautiful how this silence breaks, but it is also very emotional. Sometimes I just cannot hold it.”
In addition to beautifully breaking silence, V-Day is a chance for activists to celebrate their work. Rada describes one year when activists were so exhausted they just gathered together for a Vagina Monologues reading at a jazz club, and with accompanying music “had their party.” It was a chance for them to focus not on yet more advocacy, but upon celebrating and validating their efforts. As Dunja from Women’s House in Croatia said, “It was a nice atmosphere. Something…Something was in the air … It was not for awareness raising, it was more- let’s celebrate! Not so much about getting to the public, but about how strong we are, and what we can do together.” She jokes, “Usually we quarrel, so it’s great to just be together!” This is another element of sustaining activism that V-Day provides in the region, as organizers collaborate and support one another in their common goals; in Jelena’s words, “[V-Day] created a space for activists to talk about their work, to talk about their fears, to talk about difficulties they encountered through their work stopping violence against women.”
For ten years the The Vagina Monologues was done in readings among NGOs and women’s organizations, conferences and trainings. Now many activists are focusing on spreading the message beyond their own community. The dilemma is Jelena’s words was, “How to do it inernally as much as it happened over the years in the activist community, but also to spread it out. It needs to be spread out! It needs to be, because... its a beautiful way of really breaking taboos and pushing people outside of their comfort zone. Shaking them. Its cathartic!” Sandra summarized the resolution of this dilemma, “it has less and less sense that we do performances for each other. I mean we know that, we know each other, so there is no purpose. I’m interested in the people I don’t know. I want to reach as much people as possible. I want to touch hearts.”
With this goal in mind, activists collaborated to swath a “Vagina Triangle” between Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo. Their V-Day tour in a “crappy little van,” was intentionally political. They focused on reaching a larger public, crossing constructed borders and looking beyond problematic ethnic divides to focus on common experiences and collective solutions. Rada said, “As we all know, it’s about living on the edge. The blur on the border is nicer than something firm, it overlaps and it always has that kind of texture. Women are crossing borders- we don’t like borders, life is the most exciting on the edge” She elaborated, “This is a deeply feminist piece, with wonderful humor- in The Vagina Monologues we laugh even in the places we shouldn’t. And it’s a perfect balance.” Activists continue to use this balance to sustain themselves as well as to reach out to a wider public. They dream of expanding the movement to schools and bringing it to a more rural demographic, as Serbian Biljana (Lori) Stankovij, NoviSad Lesbian Organization founder did during her ten years performing unoficially:
“We did it in refugee camps with a mobile medical team…its an activisty way of doing The Vagina Monologues. These refugees, the stories they have… the taboo of the vagina is so big. So I don’t think, it doesn’t matter if there are ten, fifteen, two-hundered…If you make a womb atmosphere they will stay, smoke a few cigarettes, and speak about it before they go home, and then they will also speak about it there…Like in the refugee camps… they said, ‘Now we are all here, and we have seen this performance, and we are all women, so I will tell you…’ And then she adds something from her story. And then the others say, ‘Yes!’ And you just see:

It’s the end of the performance, and they are speaking.

You are speaking with them.

The performance is over, you are packing your stuff, you are leaving.

They are staying and speaking more and more and more.

You are gone, and they are still speaking.”



BANGKOK


“We were all together there.”
(Volunteer V-Day actress Rita)


During the first all-cast rehearsal of the first Thailand V-Day ever, Thai and expat women sat separately at lunch. It was a huge group of women, predominantly Thai but with over a dozen nationalities represented in the cast and production team. Bangkok is a unique entity of Thailand, and within the metropolis exist numerous cliques, divisions and communities that remain quite rigidly separate. Many of the volunteers were hearing The Vagina Monologues for the first time that long hot afternoon. They wept during Sonoko’s raw unleashing of ‘Say it.’ Even though many could not understand the language, they felt it, just as they responded to German Rita’s epic moans in “The Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy.” Their tears of empathy turned to explosive mirth. Dry leaves swirled in and puddled among the dozens of women’s shoes piled by the door, and something hapenned. Suddenly Thai Pearl was giving Canadian Yvonne a tender massage. Thais and expats were spread evenly on the floor supporting each other and melding together a tenuous community of the type rarely seen there. As one actress said, “In the team, we were bonding together, singing together, dancing together. Before, it was a bit like, some of the internationals talking, and the Thais would be in the corner. And even when we went to lunch the Thais would all sit at one table. But then it was like – we were all one. There was no division between the Thais and internationals. And we were all together there.”
This endeavor was intentionally used to unite farong (foreign) women and Thai women in a community. The play was innovatively done bilingually with subtitles, a unique solution. American director Alanna Gregory found that in Bangkok:
“There aren’t many cross–cultural based communities. It’s just Thais. French people. UN people. Americans... Trying to build a community for women in Bangkok was definitely one of the goals …It isolates one group if you only do it in English, or you only do it in Thai. And you shouldn’t. You should get both of them in the same area. Because how many times has that actually happened?! … Just sharing the same space.”
Share it they did, as V-Day was used to create not only a shared community between Thais and expats, but a common cause. The experiences of the cast were as diverse as the stories present in The Vagina Monologues. As actress Sunanda commented:
“It’s extremely diverse. I really do feel like one of the only things we have in common, if you don’t count being in the play, is that we’re women. But I think that’s one of the great parts about it. Because it’s really women from all walks of life, different attitudes, and outlooks and experiences. Because it is about every woman … Before I started I had no idea what to expect. [I was surprised by] the range of emotions covered. I cried at the audition. ‘Cause… It was so shocking, and disturbing, and just really sad. So just the range of them, and how you can laugh at some of them, and some of them just make you want to cry. It has the diversity that our group has.”
During a conversation about the diversity of the team, French Mary said, “We’re all from different countries and different backgrounds, and Thai Miu replied, “And so what? Because we all have the same organs.” And Mary, not understanding, “Orgasms?!” We laughed. “Well,” Miu said, “we hope!”
The diversity of The Vagina Monologues and their cast was reflected in the motivations of those involved, “People were drawn to it for very different reasons, for community, to make a point, further awareness in your own culture and country, or maybe because they’re survivors- its different, and its positive, and its not trying to make up for anything” These unique reasons melded into a common cause. In spite of, or perhaps because of their diversity, cast members spoke of themselves as a complete entity, whole because of their many parts. As Pearl effused,
“I can feel people here, feel it’s a very good thing in this world to support. Not just this group, but we as women! Humans! We can do great things, and I can feel that people who come here have very positive energy to move this world on … I just can feel that we are whole, the Thai women as well, not just the foreigner … I can feel that my energy is shared with the energy of these people with these good attitudes- it’s just perfect! I like to see you! I like to see Alanna! I like to see everyone in the show, it makes me happy!”
The volunteer production team envisioned this bilingual production as an initial foundation to eventually become an entirely Thai effort. Yet many actresses, particularly the Thai women, spoke passionately about its greater strength and chemistry as an international project. As Dusanee expressed, “It’s great to meet with other women from different backgrounds … and to get to know we have the same interest … involved in this, I would say, really special special show … Because without this I would not have met these girls …So I think it’s a great opportunity to involve the farong, also Thai women, and that will make the show interesting. Because if it were only farong women, that would be – not very interesting. Or if it’s only Thai… But if it’s a mix!” Actress Karin similarly asserted:
We’re reaching out for women to be more understanding of other women …Any woman that’s been a few years, and even a few months in Bangkok will see that this is a world that is divided in so many different parts… this is a very difficult place for women whether it’s expat, or Thai, or transgendered women … this is perfect. Because it speaks for all the women in Thailand. It’s great, because our production is multi-national. The Western women are from many different countries and have different experiences and different ages, same with the Thai women … It’s more than just participating, the women acting together become like a family, a team, a unit- like a nucleolus. The added energies become so much more effective when combined.
These diverse backgrounds enriched the team experience and were reconciled into a common agenda. Pearl said, “That’s why it’s interesting too. Because we have Thai people, and we have I don’t know how many nationalities, I don’t even ask. But I feel that we feel the same way. And believe in the same thing. And we come for the same objective, to stop violence against women.” Mod, one of the transgendered actresses said, “[the team] has a lot of the people from a variety of nations- I think they want to share, and it’s very universal. And I think the female, even though she comes from a different country, she has same idea about sensitivity.”
The blending of different backgrounds formed a community with a cause that allowed for a greater understanding of their unique realities. With that understanding came a strong sense of solidarity, as especially Thai women came to realize their gender oppression was not isolated. Dusanee said with relief, “with the Thai women … our perception is that western culture is very open …you are so open you can talk about this, you can act like this, and not feel anything. But in Asian countries, maybe like this or also other countries, we still feel like- oh! We cannot talk about this, especially in public.” She elaborated, “So by combining Thai and farong, maybe we can understand that… Oh, we are the same, Thai and farong women. That we have the same concerns, same problems.” Being a foreign text validates shared issues and insecurities, but also allows the show to be more radical and to escape censorship it would otherwise face.
The efforts addressed the needs of all women, including expat women. There is a tendency to hierarchize oppression, which in this instance might have led to a presumption that ethnic oppression is more debilitating than gender oppression; yet my research showed the communal action provided crucial support for expat women, in a refusal of hierarchical thinking. As one actress said, “I didn’t really do this for Thai women, I did this for myself. I did it for myself, being in Thailand. I wouldn’t do it in London. Here I did it because I feel these things more.” Another echoed, “I feel invested in it because I personally feel a great sense of stress, of sadness, of inadequacy. Of being little, anytime I see on soi 5 [notorious red light district] forty women, maybe half of them aren’t 17, having to sell their bodies … There’s a piracy of Thai women going on … A little empowerment helps me, personally, to feel like I am doing something. Because I often feel so… What can I do? It’s a huge problem!”
The bilingual production united diverse volunteers and reached a wider public than it would have had it been presented in only English or only Thai. It was initiated to unite typically separate communities, but could not have prophesized the strength of those connections. As one actress said, “I guess the nature of the issues creates a bond. … We feel so comfortable around each other, though we don’t actually know much about each other, except we are in this play. But to me that says so much, because we already love each other. It’s like loving a stranger, in a sense.” Through loving the stranger in each other, the anonymous women whose stories they presented onstage, as well as themselves, they came to realize they were not such strangers after all.

(Haven't solidified conclusion yet... may add more theory in here re: transnational feminism)