Continuing the Dialogue: The Vagina Monologues Return
Leigh Hellman and another cast of dedicated volunteer actresses and support personnel are bringing the Vagina Monologues to Gwangju for a second straight year. With auditions completed they are heading into 2013 with a target of surpassing last year’s success using larger outreach and greater awareness-building.
Hellman, a successful Fulbright Scholar who made a stand-out performance last year, also has the brainpower to make this year’s performances more than just an amazing feat of thespian magic. This event hopes to inspire women (and men) to grow throughout their lifetimes and put behind them the horrors they have faced to make a peaceful and fertile place for their families and friends to flourish.
Thus, the 2013 Gwangju Vagina Monologues is worth learning about, getting involved with and donating your time towards. The following interview includes many avenues to activism.
Why are women’s rights such a major issue? Many believe that until all human beings are treated equally, all quality issues – from using “race” to put people down, all the way to stopping war – reside within the issue of women’s rights.
Why did you sacrifice almost all your free time to bring the Vagina Monologues to Gwangju?
I rediscovered the Monologues in my final year of university when I saw fliers around campus. I checked it out, and though moved by it, I didn’t consider actively taking part in it. It wasn’t until 2011, after having seen grassroots performance groups find success in Gwangju (e.g. the Gwangju Performance Project), that I began to seriously think about taking on ‘The Vagina Monologues’as both an exercise in activism and creative expression. That’s how I began putting together the V-Day Gwangju 2012 campaign last year.
What woman’s rights issues deserve more of our attention in South Korea?
All women’s rights issues deserve more of our attention, both here in South Korea and around the world. It feels disingenuous and ignorantly privileged to say that,for example, the culture of silently accepted and/or endured domestic violence deserves more attention than the disparity between employment rates of female university graduates versus male university graduates (the highest disparity among all OECD countries). Mine is the viewpoint and opinion of only one woman. My opinion will be different from at least some Korean women, and from other foreign women, who among themselves come from vastly different backgrounds and cultures and have remarkably different lives and reasons for being in Korea. All of those opinions are valid and significant.
Stories of violence and rape tend to get attention here, and all over the world,because they are, sickeningly, seen as salacious and scandalous enough to sell papers or get website hits when the rage over the injustice doesn’t quite cut it.Stories about economic equality are often buried in boring statistics and overlooked.
Change has to come from within a society, born of personal motivations for self-betterment rather than demanded upon by an outside force. What we as participants in—but still ultimately outsiders of—Korean culture can do is start dialogues, ask questions and encourage introspection and understanding. We can offer physical help through volunteering and donations, and our perspectives —but we need to remember the cultural baggage we ourselves bring.
What was the most fulfilling achievement of the Gwangju Monologues?
Organizing and directing ‘The Vagina Monologues’ last year was truly one of the most fulfilling, as well as one of the most difficult, things I’ve done in my life. So many threads came together to make it the rewarding experience it was. A fantastic cast, as well as a wonderful group of supporters who worked with everything from tech to publicity, plus an amazing Assistant Director in Lisa Mynhardt and unwavering support from organizations like the GIC, Gwangju News and GFN, made the play a success.
The play itself was very well acted. Are you happy with the outreach to foreignimported brides, Korean women and the ex-patriots who saw the play?
All the ladies worked extremely hard to bring an honest voice to their pieces.
I am satisfied with the outreach we were able to do and the response from the community. Some people were much more receptive than others; some never got back to us. And some we didn’t have and/or couldn’t find the contacts for. I would have liked to do more outreach, particularly among immigrated brides and Korean women, and it is a goal of mine to try and make more inroads on that this year.
What types of institutions have you partnered with?
Our beneficiaries last year (and possibly again this year) were four local non-profit organizations that focus on women’s issues: three support centers for single mothers: 우리집 (Our House), 애인복지원/ (Ae In Welfare Home) and 편한집 (Pyunhan Home); and one center that advocates for and helps immigrated brides who face abuse and/or violence in their Korean homes:광주이주여성지원센터 (Gwangju Support Center for Immigrant Women). As part of the global V-Day movement, we also donated 10 percent of our proceeds to the official V-Day spotlight charity, which differs each year, as per V-Day rules.
What have been the cultural barriers, if any, you have had to peel away in order to reach your audience?
There are so many cultural barriers. I don’t think I could list them all here. Most of us are aware of the more conservative mentality in Korea when it comes to sex and sexuality (what you do in private is your business, just keep it there) but that is really just speaking in broad strokes. Some Koreans are far more conservative about these topics, while others are more open to discussions and intellectual dissections.
That’s why we tried so hard to perform each monologue with truth rather than dramatics; we wanted the honest emotion and reality of the pieces to resonate with the audience so they could start thinking about their own monologues and how they fit into the global context of women’s issues.
What’s coming up for this year?
We just finished auditions for the V-Day Gwangju 2013 campaign and we’ve got another great group of passionate performers–all new faces from last year. Performances are set for the end of April again, but the campaign’s schedule won’t be finalized until we get in the full swing of things.
Last year you had some veteran actresses, and a theme of some of the largerhuman rights issues facing women. Do you know this year’s script yet?
The script for ‘The Vagina Monologues’ changes slightly every year, with a few additions and/or subtractions and a spotlight monologue that focuses on the central goals of the V-Day organization for that particular year. This year’s script seems to contain just the essentials–original pieces from the 1996 play. This year’s V-Day is focusing most of its advertising and activist energies on the ONE BILLION RISING (http://onebillionrising.org).
This project is an empathic rejection of the mindset that there is nothing we can do to stop the beatings and rapes that one billion women (one in three globally) will be subjected to during their lifetimes. I look forward to reworking the original pieces with our new performers and bringing as much vibrancy and life to them as if they had never been performed before. I hope that through [them] we will be able to inspire the Gwangju community to rise with us all.
What are you doing to reach a larger Korean audience? Is this a hard hurdle to jump?
Yes, in many ways reaching a larger Korean audience, beyond those who areregularly active in the ‘foreign’ community, is a challenge. It is a challenge because of the language; our Monologues will be almost exclusively performed in English and that automatically knocks out a lot of people who for one reason or another [won’t watch] an English performance, regardless of content and/or summary translations.
Suggestions for events, as well as offers for participants, coordinators, themes and/or venues, are very much welcomed! Just contact us at: gwangjuvwarriors@gmail.com or join our Facebook group (www.facebook.com/groups/343222652436130/).