“There should be a vagina festival.”
I can’t remember whether she said it or I did. But, while one of the v-portrait models and I were looking at images of her on the screen just after the photo-session, one of us said shrieked, “There should be a vagina festival!” Now that we had started the conversation, there was just too much to explore and too much fun in it, not to all-out celebrate. For days.
It took me a while to get up my nerve, and I think it was a good year later, when V-Day’s Worldwide Campaign for 2007 was being announced, that I decided to do it.
V-Day’s mission is simple. It demands that violence against women and girls must end. To do this, once a year, in February, March, and April, Eve Ensler allows groups around the world to produce a performance of The Vagina Monologues, as well as other works created by V-Day, and to use the proceeds for local individual projects and programs that work to end violence against women and girls, often shelters and rape crisis centers. This is V-Day’s Worldwide Campaign. What began as one event in New York City in 1998 today includes over 5,400 V-Day events annually.
I signed up with V-Day24 and established Vagina Festival as a non-profit through Fractured Atlas25. I booked Agni Gallery26. It was just one big room. High ceilings and windows onto the street. It was on the Lower East Side, a neighborhood I loved to wander in. Perfect.
Scary. I had no experience producing events of any kind, much less a weekend-long event that would include two performances of The Vagina Monologues, a group exhibition of 13 artists’ visual art, as well as 13 performers or speakers, including poets, performance artists, musicians and spoken-word artists.
It just had to happen though.
For The Vagina Monologues, I placed an ad in Backstage for actors and a director. I received over 100 resumes. I don’t recall where I posted the calls for artists and speakers (I didn’t get much sleep in those days, so sometimes I don’t remember the details as well as I wished I did), but submissions came in and eventually that turned into a full program.
I set up the Vagina Festival website and I left Vagina Festival cards around town. My friends and supporters of vagina vérité® spread the word. I was a member of a women artists group then, The Exhibitionists27, and some of my fellow members submitted their work, and helped spread the word. My parents, Ruth and Shaul Jacoby, and Haven28spa were the primary sponsors. I can’t thank them enough for that. There really is nothing that we do entirely on our own.
Our theme for Vagina Festival 2007 was: RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT THE PERVASIVENESS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN.
And, this was our invitation challenge:
At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Violence against women and girls is a universal problem of epidemic proportions. Can we do something about this?
A group of artists challenges you: to go inside the statistics, consider what so many women endure daily, and to envision a world of peace and respect—and everyone’s capacity to participate in making that vision a reality.
At Vagina Festival 2007, we proudly and provocatively presented women’s stories through visual art, music, dance and performance art, and talks.
It warranted the ALL-CAPS title.
Producing it was intense. I had a full-time job, and worked on Vagina Festival weekends, at night and early in the mornings, sometimes all night long. I hadn’t learned the word delegate yet, didn’t really know how to ask for help (until I hit total meltdown), and was terrified of screwing it all up. That last part really kept me busy.
For The Monologues, we held auditions in my apartment. Actresses waited in the living room, where the v-portraits were installed, and I served light snacks. Not the usual audition waiting-room. The director, Michelle Dean, signed on the night before during our first and only meeting—by phone. She called me at exactly the moment we agreed on. I knew she’d be great. And she was. Michelle called them in to the bedroom one at a time, and, by the end of the afternoon, had cast our eleven actresses.
One thing that gave me solace from the beginning, was that we had a sound engineer. Austin Publicover had attended one of my salons or open houses29, and miraculously said yes when I asked him to do sound for Vagina Festival. Not only did he make sure everything sounded perfect during the festival, but he also improved and expanded on the audio of some of the performance pieces. He was a gem. All that, and he took it in stride when it turned out that I had completely overlooked that he would need back-up or time off, for the occasional meal or bathroom break.
The weekend kicked off with the opening reception, celebrating the visual art and establishing our theme. Joanna Lindenbaum and Dawn Copeland of WomanVision performed an opening ceremony, which was interactive—meaning everyone had to participate. They asked us to form a circle and to hold hands. I was one of the people who swallowed and rolled her eyes at that one. And, like everyone else there, I did what they said. They have that kind of energy. It’s not in-your-face commanding, but somehow they keep talking and singing at you until you’re doing whatever they want you to—and liking it. It’s special what they do.
They got us to tell the circle what our vaginas would say (if we had one—this was co-ed) and also to make offerings about the different kinds of violence in our lives. Playful and serious, and we probably had to sing, too.
My friend’s husband told me after that, while he’d go anywhere to support his wife’s work (she was one of the visual artists exhibiting)—this reception was actually fun.
Another thing I totally missed was that I would need help during the festival. That even though, it was all happening in the same room, that I could not be in more than one place at once30, that there was money to take in, and there were questions to answer, attendees and artists to take care of in one way or another, the door opening and closing, performances beginning and ending… I had not recruited anyone to be there with me, other than Austin, who was in the corner, surrounded by equipment and booked solid with the back-to-back program I set for us.
Fortunately, Gabrielle and Marla, two amazing friends of mine, were paying attention. I have no idea what I was thinking. Clearly, I wasn’t. But they arranged to be with me at Vagina Festival, from start to finish. Earlier that week, Marla drove me to three different boroughs, plus into Long Island, all in the same day, to buy 11 stools, 22 chairs, and I can’t remember what else we crammed into her car. Not to mention the endless listening, the two of them—and everyone else close to me—must have been doing (for weeks!) as I released (and stirred up) my never-ending anxiety about how to do this thing.
I don’t know what to tell you about next. There’s so much. I haven’t even finished telling you about the opening night’s performances, or how Judith Steinhart cleared a day for me and took the other cab filled with chairs and stools and artwork and I don’t know what else, because I was in a filled-up cab, too. That was the day before Agni Zotis helped me hang the visual art (something else you can’t do alone). And, there are two more full days of Festival to go.
The whole thing was a fantastic blur of talent and heart and storytelling via a range of artwork, music and voice—of people who gave of themselves and made this thing happen, that I really should have videoed for you. Because everyone should experience Priscilla Taylor delivering a monologue of her rape. It’s really. hard. to take. And, not nearly as hard as it should be.
Instead, for now, I’ll direct you to the web, where you can find something about all the work, and everyone who participated, performed and supported us. Go to www.leavethecastle.com and click on the Vagina Festival 2007 link.
At the time, both times—because there’s a Vagina Festival 2008, too—I was deep into the how-to-do-it side of it. All of it seemed over my head and both times I wanted to turn around and call it quits most of the way through. BUT—I had to do it. There had to be more people, more voices, more stories being told and told out loud, live and in person and using other media.
The more time I spent photographing v-portraits, reading stories submitted to the site, meeting people at exhibitions, the more this needed a three dimensional space.
Or maybe I just kept getting lonely, working on the website and the images on my own. vagina vérité® needed to be among people.
