ML - Boston Common

Boston Common - 2015 - Issue 2 - Late Spring

Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.

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Ensler speaks at last year's JustLove event, part of the global One Billion Rising for Justice campaign. Ensler with actress Olivia Thirlby during rehearsals for O.P.C. now I'll get on with my life." What is the role of art, and specifically theater, in inf luencing these issues? I've always believed in the revolutionary power of theater, since my early days seeing how, unlike any other art form, theater goes right into you. It's like a physical experience, and I think when things change in your body, when the chemistry of your DNA gets altered, that's when real change happens. When you're writing a play, is it your deliberate intention that when it lands in a theater, it will lead to some change? That's an interesting question. I don't know if it's so con- sciously deliberate. Sometimes it's an investigation, an act of curiosity. And sometimes it's because something in the world is really pissing me off and I want to address it. With The Vagina Monologues, it was plain and simple curiosity. I was really curious what women felt about their vaginas. How does having the institutional support of the ART make a difference for you as a playwright? I got to do so much work that I really wanted to do on O.P.C. and so much investigation of the issues with the cast. Also, we were able to link it to Harvard to deepen our investiga- tion of those issues. It is fantastic to be in a community of people who are engaged in an ongoing way with your process as a writer, with your evolution as a writer. Have you charted out what you want to do during the rest of your three-year collaboration with the ART? I'm in the process of adapting my memoir as a play. That's going to be the next project. And then I'm working on a new play and a musical that will follow; I'm just planting the seeds and researching those now. Considering the impact you've had with The Vagina Monologues and with your more recent work, do you relish that success? Or do you just go nose to the grindstone and keep plowing forward? The second. [Laughs] One of the great things about age is that when you're younger, you have this massive self-hatred and low self-esteem coupled with absurd grandiosity. When you get older, you just hunger for your place in the circle. And that feels like home now. These next years, what I want to do more than anything is write and see what creative madness can be stirred up. BC "once you wake up to the pervasiveness of the violence against women, there's no way you can't be involved in it until it stops." —eve ensler photography by gretjen helene (ensler and thirlby); gustavo Caballero/getty images for v-day.org (justlove) 64  bostoncommon-magazine.com PEOPLE Thought Leader

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