Eve Ensler

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Eve Ensler(left) with Salma HayekTemplate:Unverifiedimage

Eve Ensler (born 25 May 1953 in Scarsdale, New York) is an American playwright and feminist activist best known for the play The Vagina Monologues.

Early life

Ensler graduated from Middlebury College in 1975. She wrote an undergraduate thesis on suicide in contemporary poetry; a way of coping with her childhood trauma with a sexually abusive father. She married Richard McDermott in 1978 and divorced in 1988. She is the stepmother of actor Dylan McDermott, whom she adopted when he was 18 and she was 26.

The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues was written in 1996 as a response to the guilt and embarrassment that many women still connect with their bodies and/or their sexuality. First performed in the basement of the Cornelia Street Café in SoHo, The Vagina Monologues has been translated into 35 different languages and performed world-wide. Celebrities who have starred in the play include: Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon and Oprah Winfrey. Ensler was awarded the Obie Award in 1996 for ‘Best New Play’ and in 1999 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting. She has also received the Berrilla-Kerr Award for Playwriting, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, and the Jury Award for Theater at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.

It famously features audience participation where women are encouraged to stand and chant the word "Cunt!" over and over in order to "reclaim" it for femininity.

Recent works

Ensler has been involved in several films and has appeared on television on Real Time with Bill Maher (26 August 2005) and Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (12 August 2005).

From October 2005-April 2006, Eve is touring 20 North American cities with her newest play The Good Body, following engagements on Broadway, at ACT in San Francisco, and in a workshop production at Seattle Repertory Theatre. The Good Body addresses why women of many cultures and backgrounds percieve pressure to change the way they look in order to be accepted in the eyes of society.

Her latest work is the play, "The Treatment" which debuted on September 12th, 2006 at the Culture Project in New York. This play explores the moral and pyschological trauma that are the result of participation in military conflicts. It stars her step-son, Dylan McDermott.

Selected works

Plays

• Conviction
• Lemonade
• The Depot
• Floating Rhoda
• The Glue Man
• Extraordinary Measures
• The Vagina Monologues
• The Good Body
• Necessary Targets

Books

• V-World
• I Am An Emotional Creature
• Vagina Warriors

Films

• Fear No More: Stop Violence Against Women (2002)
• The Vagina Monologues (2002)
• Until the Violence Stops (2003)
• What I Want My Words to Do to You: Voices From Inside a Women's Maximum Security Prison (2003)

Activism

Ensler is a prominent anti-violence activist. In 1998, she founded V-Day as an extension of her play The Vagina Monologues. V-Day is a grassroots movement to stop violence against women and girls by raising awareness and funds within local communities. V-Day happens to be on Valentines day because, as Ensler says, "Valentines Day is stupid". Funds are raised through benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues staged at campuses and communities around the world.

Ensler has led a writing group since 1998 at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, which was portrayed in What I Want My Words To Do To You.

She has received awards for her anti-violence work, including the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership, and the Matrix Award (2002). In May 2003, she received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Middlebury College.

In February 2004, Ensler, alongside Sally Field, Jane Fonda and Christine Lahti, protested to have the Mexican government re-investigate the slayings of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, on the Texas border.

Ensler is a very close supporter of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and went to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban. She supports Afghani women and has organized many programs for them. She organized one event named the "Afghani Women's Summit For Democracy".

External links

• Eve Ensler biography via V-Day
• Eve Ensler via Internet Movie Database
• Eve Ensler: "Afghanistan is everywhere"
• Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution from the Jewish Women's
• Pamela Grossman (April 19, 2000). Down the Vagina Trail. Salon.com
• Eve Ensler's 22 min Talk at TED Conference (2004) Monterey, CA