Around the early 2000s – before fashion weeks and literary festivals became the norm in dowdy, dusty Lahore — I heard a rumour that Eve Ensler was coming to Pakistan. I choked on the water I was drinking and sat down. Eve Ensler is like Moses or the Grand Duchess Anastacia in that no one ever thought she’d make it to Lahore. Ensler was and is world-famous; an author-playwright whose work is mainly concerned with feminism, she debuted her play ‘The Vagina Monologues’ in 1996 at an off-Broadway theatre. In mere moments it became a cult classic. A few years on, it was bigger than that. It was like Star Wars for feminists.
The play’s premise was simple: stories about women. When it first opened, the play had Ensler sitting on a stool on a stage and performing different monologues about womanhood. Eventually she began casting celebrities for each monologue and added more and more women. Ultimately the participants settled on a template: the curtain would rise to show a group of women sitting in a semicircle on stage, and each of them performed a different monologue about their private parts; some were funny takes on dates gone wrong; others were grim tales of mutilation, rape, and violence. Many of them were moving, funny, acerbic. All of them were powerful.
The play spawned a movement and within a few years, the abbreviation hitherto reserved for St. Valentine’s Day had come to denote a celebration of women’s right to talk about their bodies. I was a student in America when it was trendy for troupes across colleges, cities and countries to stage a modified version of the play in an effort to end violence against women. The franchising worked because the structure of the play allowed for new monologues and different characters to be added seamlessly, so that the V Monologues in Morocco would have a completely different set of stories than the V Monologues in Belgium or Mexico. Over the years, I’ve been able to see a few versions of the play, mainly because I knew a lot of actresses at college, and each time it was quite different.
But when I got that fateful text message in Lahore, I had never seen the play, and had only read about it in magazines and seen it satirized on TV shows. Knowing all this, you too would have choked on your water when you found out all those years ago that Eve Ensler and her play were coming to Lahore. Lahore! The V Monologues! A play so patently provocative that a decade later I still can’t write out its whole name without fear (it’s a body part, not a bomb. Relax).
The last time it happened, the play was performed in a theatre in Model Town with local celebrities and actresses. They included a few monologues set in Pakistan but by and large it stuck to the originals. It was wonderful and freeing to be at that performace. For a brief moment I, like many easily seduced “liberal” (read: privileged and pleasure-seeking) Pakistanis, was convinced that my country was on a one-way ticket to progress.
Over a decade later, Eve Ensler is coming back as one of the participants in Lahore’s excellent literay festival. Isn’t that amazing? I’m a big fan of the LLF. It runs like clockwork, has a host of interesting figures from across our society (and beyond) and encourages a now endangered sense of debate and discourse that often reverberates long after the festival finishes. Also, and perhaps most importantly, it has free coffee.
Today is the first day of the LLF, and I encourage you all to go, since there is really something for everyone (FYI: Ensler is on day 2). I’m looking forward to so many sessions I’ll likely be standing in the Alhamara quadrangle paralyzed by choices, but I know I want to see the session on Kushwant Singh. Also, Mohsin Hamid will be talking about his new book ‘Discontent and its Civilizations’, which I think is the cleverest title since the release of the children bedtime book for harassed parents, aptly titled “Go the *%$# to Sleep.” For all those who think they’ll eventually one day maybe kinda write a novel (sucks to be us), there is a session on writing your first book. For art addicts, Unver Shafi is speaking on the first day, which I want to see mainly because I’ve never heard him before and have always liked looking at his work.
Actually, there are quite a few really good talks on aspects of art on all three days of the festival. Rashid Rana will be on a panel with cartoonist Sabir Nazar (the cartoonist whose work you often see on the front page of this paper, among many others) talking about comic art and politics. If I had to choose, I would go see Rashid Rana talk about taking South Asian work to the Venice Biennale.
Some of you may remember when I wrote about my visit to the architectural Biennale last year, and so you shouldn’t be at all a surprised to learn that the idea of a Pakistan-meets-India pavilion in Venice fills me with the kind of excitement I reserve for Dunkin Donut boxes. Or Eve Ensler.
Let the festivities begin!
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter
The play’s premise was simple: stories about women. When it first opened, the play had Ensler sitting on a stool on a stage and performing different monologues about womanhood. Eventually she began casting celebrities for each monologue and added more and more women. Ultimately the participants settled on a template: the curtain would rise to show a group of women sitting in a semicircle on stage, and each of them performed a different monologue about their private parts; some were funny takes on dates gone wrong; others were grim tales of mutilation, rape, and violence. Many of them were moving, funny, acerbic. All of them were powerful.
Eve Ensler is like Moses or the Grand Duchess Anastacia in that no one ever thought she'd make it to Lahore
The play spawned a movement and within a few years, the abbreviation hitherto reserved for St. Valentine’s Day had come to denote a celebration of women’s right to talk about their bodies. I was a student in America when it was trendy for troupes across colleges, cities and countries to stage a modified version of the play in an effort to end violence against women. The franchising worked because the structure of the play allowed for new monologues and different characters to be added seamlessly, so that the V Monologues in Morocco would have a completely different set of stories than the V Monologues in Belgium or Mexico. Over the years, I’ve been able to see a few versions of the play, mainly because I knew a lot of actresses at college, and each time it was quite different.
But when I got that fateful text message in Lahore, I had never seen the play, and had only read about it in magazines and seen it satirized on TV shows. Knowing all this, you too would have choked on your water when you found out all those years ago that Eve Ensler and her play were coming to Lahore. Lahore! The V Monologues! A play so patently provocative that a decade later I still can’t write out its whole name without fear (it’s a body part, not a bomb. Relax).
The last time it happened, the play was performed in a theatre in Model Town with local celebrities and actresses. They included a few monologues set in Pakistan but by and large it stuck to the originals. It was wonderful and freeing to be at that performace. For a brief moment I, like many easily seduced “liberal” (read: privileged and pleasure-seeking) Pakistanis, was convinced that my country was on a one-way ticket to progress.
Over a decade later, Eve Ensler is coming back as one of the participants in Lahore’s excellent literay festival. Isn’t that amazing? I’m a big fan of the LLF. It runs like clockwork, has a host of interesting figures from across our society (and beyond) and encourages a now endangered sense of debate and discourse that often reverberates long after the festival finishes. Also, and perhaps most importantly, it has free coffee.
Today is the first day of the LLF, and I encourage you all to go, since there is really something for everyone (FYI: Ensler is on day 2). I’m looking forward to so many sessions I’ll likely be standing in the Alhamara quadrangle paralyzed by choices, but I know I want to see the session on Kushwant Singh. Also, Mohsin Hamid will be talking about his new book ‘Discontent and its Civilizations’, which I think is the cleverest title since the release of the children bedtime book for harassed parents, aptly titled “Go the *%$# to Sleep.” For all those who think they’ll eventually one day maybe kinda write a novel (sucks to be us), there is a session on writing your first book. For art addicts, Unver Shafi is speaking on the first day, which I want to see mainly because I’ve never heard him before and have always liked looking at his work.
Actually, there are quite a few really good talks on aspects of art on all three days of the festival. Rashid Rana will be on a panel with cartoonist Sabir Nazar (the cartoonist whose work you often see on the front page of this paper, among many others) talking about comic art and politics. If I had to choose, I would go see Rashid Rana talk about taking South Asian work to the Venice Biennale.
Some of you may remember when I wrote about my visit to the architectural Biennale last year, and so you shouldn’t be at all a surprised to learn that the idea of a Pakistan-meets-India pavilion in Venice fills me with the kind of excitement I reserve for Dunkin Donut boxes. Or Eve Ensler.
Let the festivities begin!
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com and follow @fkantawala on twitter