“Some people say, ‘I could never do what you did because there is no way I could talk about that stuff on stage’ but the thing is that these are the things that need to be talked about—and sexuality shouldn’t be something that is as taboo as it is,” senior Johanna DeBari said about her performance on Valentine’s Day at The Vagina Monologues.
The event took place in the Mabel Brown Room last Friday, Feb. 14.
According to Vday.org, the annual performance “demands that violence against women and girls must end.”
According to the sit, V-Day is an organized response against violence toward women founded in 1998.
The Vagina Monologues attempts to help raise awareness for the thousands of victims of sexual violence.
DeBari offered her reasoning for participating in the VM (Vagina Monologues).
“It impacts a lot of people differently. It can be something that expands your idea of sexuality and womanhood and all of these things, but it can also be something that gives you hope and is an empowerment.”
DeBari said she found the performance to be self-empowering.
“Over the past two years, the monologues I have done have been increasing in intimacy and how they affect me and how much it takes out of me,” she said. This was DeBari’s third year in the VM.
Sam Lewis / Equinox Staff:
Students perform during the ‘Vagina Monologues’ in the Mabel Brown Room on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2014. The monologues aim to raise awareness for sexual violence.
Fifteen monologues were performed by the cast of fourteen members.
Jess Lulka, a previous director of the monologues and a student at KSC, explained the process for choosing the performers for the roles.
“Everyone tries out and is cast by the director and assistant director. The performers are asked if they are comfortable with the monologue before performing,” Lulka shared.
“It feels great to be a part of something so empowering,” KSC student Victoria Patt said after her performance.
The director this year was KSC student Taylor Ciambra.
“I was the assistant director last year and it felt great being able to be directing the performance this year,” Ciambra said while wearing her bright pink suspenders and pink laces.
DeBari shared some of the inspiration that motivated the performers for this year’s monologue.
“One of the most inspiring pieces was we had a story that was sent to us from MCVP—the Monadnock Center for Violence Prevention—of a person who said that the Vagina Monologues basically changed her life because she was in an abusive situation and the Vagina Monologues basically gave her hope that there was life beyond it. It was a really touching story that we all heard,” DeBari said.
She continued, “Hearing that story from a person who really was affected by it made the difference for me.”
DeBari’s own performance in the VM, in her own interpretation, was about, “A woman who grows up unsure about her sexuality and doesn’t really know her place in the world in that sort of way. She discovers how this inner part of herself that is unleashed when she decides that she is gay and realizes that she has an intense sexuality and that’s okay.”
She shared her hope that her audience could come away from the performance feeling more comfortable on the subjects shared and displayed on stage.
“It’s not a big deal if you talk about this stuff,” DeBari urged, whose performance also included a series of sexual moaning while acting out stages of orgasms.
“The fact that I did twelve or fifteen moans on stage, that shouldn’t be a big deal, because sex is a part of everyone’s life and everyone does it in their own different way,” DeBari said.
As this is DeBari’s senior year, she said wanted to give it her all in her last performance.
“I wanted to do one that was like that, I left it out on the stage and I did as much as I possibly could to add to the whole experience of the monologue,” DeBari said.
She said that she wanted to do that particular scene because it terrified her.
“It was kind of like a self-empowerment thing and a challenge that I thought would help me get over my fears of self confidence. Once you moan in front of a crowd of people, you have no boundaries,” DeBari said.
Kenzie Travers can be contacted at mtravers@keene-equinox.com
Nicholas Martin can be contacted at nmartin@keeneeqinox.com