A community of vaginas

Since the cast list was decided during fall semester, the cast has taken part in rehearsals and bonding activities on a weekly basis. During this last week before the show, they’re putting on V-Week, in which they will rehearse and have events every day.

“It’s kind of like a vagina family,” Abby Schottenfels, a Residential College of Arts and Humanities freshman, said of being a part of the cast. “It’s really interesting because I’ve never really had a group of people that I can talk to about that stuff, specifically.”

Noel Schroeder, an international relations and psychology senior, said she has enjoyed having the sense of community with the cast, and being able to celebrate common aspects of their lives.

“During the week before the show, there was a night where we just talked about out vagina experiences, good and bad,” she said. “It’s just a good way to bond with the rest of the cast and get to know them and talk about these things that previously might be uncomfortable to talk about, but you’re close enough to these people that you can really get these issues out in the open.”

The newcomer

Schottenfels decided to try out for “The Vagina Monologues” after seeing a poster advertising the show in the Snyder-Phillips Hall basement that said “We hope you cum.” She and a friend went to tryouts, never expecting to get cast in the show.

“We didn’t think we’d make it because we’re just freshmen, and it’s a community-wide thing and there are so many qualified people,” Schottenfels said. “But we did make it, and found out it’s really this cool feminist movement and we’re proud to be vagina warriors now.”

She has a part in a group monologue called “Wear & Say,” in which a reporter asked women what their vaginas would wear and say, if only they could speak and wear clothes.

But this wasn’t Schottenfels’ first experience with “The Vagina Monologues.” Schottenfels said a group of women at the Jewish community center in her hometown of Bloomfield Hills put on the show last year.

“I was surprised because it was a lot of my mom’s friends being pretty vulgar. It’s really out there, but I think it’s important that it’s out there,” she said. “I was just glad that the kind of conservative, yuppity people from Bloomfield Hills were even doing it.”

Schottenfels said the main message behind the monologues could be what makes the production relatable for such a vast audience.

“I just think you hear the stories of the different women who share their monologues and it’s like, you know them. Like, I know this person,” she said. “All the stories are really personal and told in a way that you can recognize.”

The LBGT activist

Schroeder first heard about “The Vagina Monologues” in high school. She and a van full of friends, driven by her mother, headed to Central Michigan University for the show.

“I think it’s the message that it says to women that female sexuality and female parts aren’t gross. They’re something that can be talked about, something that can be appreciated,” Schroeder said. “It’s not just sex, but it’s birth and it’s life and it’s relationships and menstruation and all those different kinds of things that make women women. I think it was really important as a high-schooler to learn that those topics aren’t taboo.”

After seeing the show her freshman and sophomore years at MSU, she said she heard about tryouts last year and wanted to get involved.

Last year, Schroeder said she had a small part — telling an outrageous fact about the clitoris — and this year she’s in two monologues, “They Beat the Girl Out Of My Boy … Or So They Tried” and “A Six-Year-Old Girl Was Asked.”

Schroeder said lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender issues have been important to her for a long time. She started the gay-straight alliance at her high school, and went through ally training once she got to college. This is mainly why she said “They Beat the Girl Out Of My Boy … Or So They Tried” is her favorite monologue, since it highlights the experience of transgender women, whose experiences are often unnoticed.

“It’s an issue that relates to women and relates to vaginas that’s not really thought about in that context. You don’t really think that transgendered people, male-to-female people, really identify with women’s issues, but they do. They’re women,” Schroeder said.

“We talked in hushed tones about vaginas, clitorises or menstruation, but transgendered issues really aren’t out there. … The monologue really touches on a lot of the challenges that transgendered women have to face — assault, most prominently. That’s a big part of the monologue, that these women were beaten when they were boys and they’re still beat en when they’re women.”

The serendipitous cast member

Keisha Hoskins was shocked. That’s really the only way to describe her first reaction when her friend told her the name of the production she wanted the two of them to try out for in fall 2007 semester.

After some research, Hoskins, a journalism senior, said she was still surprised by the audaciousness of the monologues, but she tried out anyway. Two weeks later, she heard she had made the cast.

“I had got ‘My Angry Vagina,’ which was very shocking because I wasn’t a big swearer. I didn’t swear that much and the part was filled with it,” she said. “I looked at the e-mail and was like, ‘Oh, they put my name in the wrong place.’”

But Hoskins’ name was in the correct place. And she came to love the monologue, which features a woman talking about how pissed off her vagina is because of the injustices wrought against it in the form of tampons, douches and “cold duck lips.”

This year, Hoskins will be performing another humorous monologue entitled, “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could,” one girl’s vagina tale from 5 years old to age 16.

Although she said she was raised in a more conservative family with older parents, Hoskins said her whole family came to be really supportive of her performance.

“I went to church the next Sunday after I told my mom about the play and she told her friends at church about it,” she said.

“When she was willing to tell the church ladies about the part, I knew she was proud of me.”