Vagina Monologues is celebrating their national 15 year anniversary and Gustavus will be nearing almost ten years. The play, written by Eve Ensler, opened in 1996 after Ensler interviewed 200 women on sex, relationships, and violence on women.

The monologues talk about the feminine experience including topics of sex, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, and orgasm.

“Doing this on campus is a great way to start dialogue surrounding women and topics concerning them and their bodies,” campus organizer of Vagina Monologues, Senior Claudia Martinez said.

The event is focused on creating an open space for frank discussion about the avoided topics of the female body.

“The more vague the words we choose to use are, the more distant we become from the topics that are discussed. In this case, being frank with our language gets to the point of what needs to be discussed,” Junior Jonathan Warling said.

Warling is the only man working with the Womyn’s Awareness Center on Vagina Monologues. His role with the event is to promote and advertise the monologues, including reaching out to the Gustavus Adolphus College branch at the American Swedish Institute and creating the event poster.

“We are creating a place where it is okay to laugh and cry. You can feel every emotion and audience members, whether male or female, will be able to relate to a piece,” Martinez said.

Words like “clit” and pieces titled “Reclaiming the Cunt,” “The Flood,” and “Hair” are said with no restrictions. The goal of the monologues is to give women the leadership to talk about their vagina as an aspect of female empowerment.

“They are funny, heart wrenching, witty, and full of life. I’ve cried through every performance of ‘My vagina was a village’ and laughed through ‘The woman who loved to make vaginas happy.’ The Vagina Monologues are, in one word, cathartic,” Junior Laurel Boman, actress in Gustavus; 2013 Vagina Monologues, said.

“Vagina Monologues is a way to take the focus off of the male driven society that we are surrounded by and better understand how women see these topics,” Warling said.

Watching all of the women perform the pieces is a way for the audience to match a story to a face or person. Having a connection between the monologue and the performer makes the reality of the piece come to light.

“These monologues do not offer a simple, normative, or even common experience. Some aren’t even politically correct, but what they do offer is a multi-varied collection of real stories from real women of all walks of life,” Boman said.

The monologues are open to any woman who is interested in performing them. The performers vary each night and the scripts are not memorized so any woman and every woman are welcome to participate next year.

Vagina Monologues is at 8:00 p.m. Friday, Mar. 15, 6:00 p.m. Saturday, Mar. 16, and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, Mar. 17, 2013 in Alumni Hall. Tickets are three dollars for students and five dollars for the general public and can be purchased in the Diversity Center, outside the Evelyn Young Dining room during tabling, and through e-mail at vmons@gustavus.edu. The proceeds will go to RAINN, (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), that helps with programs, therapy and housing for women affected by sexual violence.