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Flying Vaginas

The last two days have been a whirlwind of flying vaginas; we've had two long but exhilarating days of rehearsals with all our vaginas' voices rising and resonating together and individually into a beautiful choral symphony, with an abundance of laughter to boot. My sides are still hurting from laughing, my mind is spinning, and my excitement level is through the roof. The last two days have provided that extra cohesiveness in an already solidly intertwined production team and cast, and with Merry's guidance and vision we have become an unstoppable force of flying vaginas! We are pumped and ready to soar!

All that remains is for you to come join us and lend your voices, ears, and joyous laughter to the mix...6 days to go!

Wetting Your......Apetites

We had a kick-ass production meeting on Wednesday and it's astounding what we've accomplished in such a short time. But you don't want to hear the ins and outs, no, what you want to hear is how awesome this event is shaping up to be. A little preview of what's in the works to tantalize your imagination and get you as excited about this event as we are...

Each evening, the doors open a full hour before the play begins. This isn't because New Yorker's are notoriously late, no, its because we have a number of other really fun things going on. First of all, the venue is a club, which means that if you're over 21, you can relax as you enter the warm folds of our V-Day environment with a nice cocktail or glass of wine. There will be live music being played by incredibly talented spunky womyn, and vagina goodies being sold like a vagina magnetic poetry kit, a V-day baseball cap or tank top, V-Day Brooklyn buttons, and vagina cookies. You may also spot a memmber or two of the Gotham Girls Roller Derby team, rolling by on skates with a tray of goodies to sell or information to pass around.

In addition, we are doing a clothesline project, where womyn are encouraged to "air their dirty laundry" by writing out or drawing any of their vagina experiences- violating, positive, uncertain or otherwise- anonymously on an item of clothing and then hanging them up on a clothesline to create a collective visual exhibit of our experiences as womyn.

Then the show begins. You will laugh, cry, identify, laugh some more, and scream the word cunt at the top of your lungs. You will see yourself, your mother, your sister, your aunt, your neighbor, your girlfriend, and your 4th grade teacher reflected within the scope of these pieces. You will celebrate vaginas with us. You will celebrate yourselves, no matter what gender you may be.

But the evening does not end here! We all hang out together with more awesome live music, more drinks, and more vagina paraphenalia. We talk and dance and celebrate until the wee hours or until people with daytime jobs have to leave and go sleep. Most importantly, we feel complete, and comfortable, and loved and empowered by a community we all created, and with which we will hopefully leave.

Excited yet?

Vagina Celebration and Exhaltation

Merry is a phenomenal director who has such a firm grasp on where the entire play needs to go and how to make that happen. She is focusing heavily on making it an inclusive production, for all womyn and men alike, and not alienating to anyone. I love this about her...she wants to make it a celebration of womynhood that all can participate in. That is exactly the outlook we all came into this endeavor with, and exactly what we want to say.

I had a wonderful rehearsal with her yesterday for the piece My Angry Vagina, and we talked about how anger can either be a violent alienating thing or a productive empowering thing; the difference lies in coming from a place of defensiveness vs. a place of reclaimation and exhaltation. For this piece, as well as several others, Merry has stressed that we cannot approach these stories from a place of victimhood. We do not want to, and should not, view any vaginas as victims. We are survivors, not victims, and this should be celebrated. These womyn's stories are songs of empowerment and togetherness and the beautiful healing strength that can be found in a community of womyn. They are not in any way about hatred or violent anger. I love what this play and V-Day represent in terms of proactive healing and strengthening and growth and prevention as a community, rather than a defeated whine or angry diatribe.

I love that Merry knows exactly how to make this happen, and is orchestrating through every rehearsal exactly the show we want it to be. I left rehearsal feeling thrilled and empowered and so overjoyed to be me...and that was just a rehearsal!

-Sara Jo

ADVANCED TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE!

Advanced Ticket Sales are now available through Southpaw's website!

Click on the above link, or go through the sidebar link to the vagina venue and purchase your tickets right now! Don't wait, don't put it off, do not pass go and collect $200...head there right now before we're sold out. Its going to be an awesome event and you'll be kicking yourself for quite some time if you end up missing it...

CLICK ABOVE TO WATCH

Paypal link is up!

Yay! We have a paypal link up now in the sidebar! For all of you vagina friendly visitors who want to contribute and don't need the tax deduction or just want to give $10 or whatever you can afford, this is a quick and easy way to do it (and a very worthwhile cause, as all proceeds from the event itself go to The Park Slope Safe Homes Project). 

Okay, end of shameless plea.

The Journey

I think this comment by Aisling perfectly sums up a lot of what we all here in vaginaland feel, and it mirrors sentiments voiced by many different womyn upon seeing the show for the first time. It deserved to be posted as its own entry. All I have to say is Em's famous "Fuck yeah!"

-Sara Jo

I've never looked so deeply into what my vagina means to me before! I'm so glad I am sharing this journey with such an amazing group of women! (I can't believe I'm typing the word vagina!)

Posted by: Aisling | March 22, 2005 05:22 PM

The Vagina is Clearly in Control

So we got the rough drafts of our graphic design for the postcard from our awesome graphic vaginer today. We actually got 3 options, all of which are wonderful and completely perfect in 3 different ways. Em and I both have the same favorite, but we put forth the options to the producing team and will come to a consesus  (one that hopefully agrees with Em and me). I showed it to a producer friend of mine who's been an absolutely amazing source of help throughout this whole process and he said  "What I like in the first is that the tail is wagging the dog, so to speak.  Bad euphemism.  It's about the vagina and not the skirt or the woman wearing it.  The vagina is clearly in control." I love that! I think that's my new motto for this whole experience. The vagina is clearly in control.
-Sara Jo

Productive Vaginas

I am damn proud of our vaginas; the have been hard at work and quite productive thus far. In very little time we have been pulling this together and gotten quite a lot accomplished - It just goes to show you the power we have when we join forces and apply our different strengths.

Aisling has been hard at work finding us awesome musicians to play before and after the show (as well as having agreed to lend her own amazing singing talent to the mix), which is going to make the whole event even more fun and diverse and exciting. The talent she's found is amazing and I can't wait to hear these womyn play! She's also working on getting us the couches we'd ideally like to have for seating.

Sarah Jane got us our wonderful venue and is busting her butt to get us lighting and sound people. She's been working with casting and she and Bobby are the volunteer coordinators and gathering the troops we need to pull this off. The venue, Southpaw, is such a perfect funky kick-ass space...the second I walked in I knew it was perfect for exactly the kind of event we want to have. We all fell in love at first sight.

Bobby turned water into wine and got us tomorrow's rehearsal space for FREE - she must be up for canonization, as this is truly a miraculous thing! She's been our budget goddess, somehow bridging the gap between the fiscal and artistic sides of this whole thing - not an easy feat at all. She's also working on the additional fundraising possibilities that will occurr at the event itself, such as selling T-shirts and buttons and magnets.

Sara Jo, who is ironically the least organized of the bunch by far, has been furiously typing away at every meeting, tracking what has been done, what needs to be done, and who's doing what. She set up a yahoo group to maintain a calendar to keep us on schedule and contantly harasses the group with non-stop e-mails in her attempt at keeping everyone abreast of the latest. She's hammered out a fundraising letter so that we can raise the money to do this thing and has been working with the graphic vaginer and the vaginavlogger, so that we can get the word out.

Em is doing, well, everything...she is our captain, our inspiration, and the birth mother of this baby. Poor Em is the one stuck with all the legal crap - dealing with all the paperwork, working with Actors equity Association, getting the actors insurance, working with the non-profit umbrella organization, and working with the V-Day organization. She's been making it all happen, and making sure it can all happen; although she's come close, she hasn't had a heart attack yet. She found our fabulous director, Merry, and our stage manager and assistant stage manager.

Who knew it took this much and more? Thank god there are so many of us working together, though even so it can be totally overwhelming. I think we need to give eachother huge kudos for everything we've done so far and all of the hard work and incredible energy that's been poured into this. I can't believe its all coming together so well...it gives me goosebumps to see how fucking amazing we've been. To quote Emma, Fuck yeah!

Be True To Yourself

Click on the picture to watch the video

Give Us Money! Pretty Please?

Dear Reader:

We are writing to you to let you know about a project we are currently working on and incredibly passionate about; we are also asking for your support for this work that is incredibly important to us on both an artistic and social level.  Five amazing women have joined forces to produce a V-Day event including Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues at Southpaw in Brooklyn this coming April 10th and 12th and need any help you are able to give towards the realization of this incredible endeavor.

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls, with fundraising and awareness raising events such as ours held in 1100 cities from Delhi to Detroit inspiring women to take back their bodies and their lives. V-Day is creative education; a fun and innovative way to inform and inspire communities to continue the fight to stop violence against women and girls.   The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler is an empowering collection of monologues created from many interviews with diverse groups of women all over the world about their vaginas. The Vagina Monologues is a celebration and a revelation all rolled into one funny and powerful piece of theatre.

One of the things that excites us most about this project is the fact that it is a fundraising event and 90% of the ticket sales are donated towards programs that work to stop violence against women both globally and locally. The majority of our proceeds will be given to the Park Slope Safe Homes Project, a local organization that works to raise awareness and provide services and legal advocacy for victims of domestic violence and their children. Their services include shelter and non-shelter support, individual counseling and safety planning, criminal justice advocacy, support groups, and community training and education.

Given the limited number of performances we are able to do and the fundraising aspect of this production, our expenses cannot begin to be covered by the 10% of ticket sales.  This has necessitated the need to seek additional funding from outside sources.  We believe passionately in this project and in our collaboration.  We hope you will consider supporting this project with a contribution - even $10 helps. 

Your check should be made payable to The Field, Inc., a non-profit tax exempt organization of which our company is a member.  The check should be earmarked in the memo line for “Mighty Yawp Productions”.  Please mail the check to Mighty Yawp Productions: 89 Dean Street #2 Brooklyn, NY 11201 and we will deliver it to The Field.  PLEASE DO NOT MAIL THE CHECK TO THE FIELD.

The Field is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the New York City performing arts community. Contributions made to The Field and earmarked for Mighty Yawp Productions are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. For more information about The Field contact: The Field, 161 6th Avenue, New York NY 10013, (212)691-6969, fax: (212)255-2053, www.thefield.org. e-mail: info@thefield.org. A copy of The Field’s latest annual report may be obtained, upon request, from The Field or from the Office of the Attorney General, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.

Please feel free to contact us at mightyyawpproductions@gmail.com if you need any further information, or would like to be involved in any way. We are also documenting our journey in an online video and written journal at www.vaginavlog.com; please continue to visit and watch our creative process unfold. Thank you in advance for any contribution you are able to give towards this important and amazing work.

Sincerely,

The Ladies of Mighty Yawp Productions

Emma Explains

Click on the picture to watch the video

Vaginas Wearing Pajamas

The wine and laughter flowed endlessly at last night's VAJAMA PARTY, as did the creativity. We did manage to get quite a bit accomplished in between stuffing ourselves with Mexican food and chips, talking about an endless array of vagina and non-vagina related topics, and of course the magical bottomless glasses of wine. It was actually quite relaxing to be able to take our time and stray off subject and just relax and be ourselves. It was also really exciting to have a slumber party, like we used to have as kids only infintely more fun.

Mica, our fabulous videoblogger came by to party with us, camera in hand, and was imediately indoctrinated as a Mighty Yawp woman and adored by all. Another woman joined our team last night, in the form of a sassy witty take-no-prisoners with an ever present sense of humor woman named Ashlie; she did an absolutely perfect cold reading of the monologue The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy, and it was immediately decided that she should be on board.

Most of the monologues were claimed/assigned to existing cast members, and we figured out exactly who (type wise) we needed to fill the 5 remaining slots. We read through the choices for additional monologues aloud together, and chose the two we felt were the most powerful; My Short Skirt and The Memory of Her Face. It was wonderful to hear our voices together in one room reading the pieces round robin style - the energy was amazing; it made me giddily excited for what I know is going to be a wonderful production.

This morning we also hammered out some details for our brilliant graphic vaginer. The adjectives we came up with to describe our production are as follows: fun/celebratory/playful/free spirited; warm/cozy/friendly/inclusive; daring/bold/brave/intelligent; sexy

Which is exactly the way I would describe our VAJAMA PARTY as well! I'd say it was a huge success; we all left renewed, relaxed, and energized about the show and the work we're doing. Tuesday we meet with our fabulous director, Merry, and we're off and running on the artistic side of things (which of course we're all thrilled about, as we were actors long before we got this crazy idea to attempt producing).

My favorite quote of the morning would have to be "Excuse me, I'm just looking for my pants..."
(no, it wasn't that kind of party!)

Vaginas Just Wanna Have Fun!

We are pouring all of our energies into this production because we believe strongly in it; we believe in the affirming vagina loving womyn loving message of the play, and we believe in the V-Day mission to help stop violence against womyn through increased awareness, education, and financial support of both global and local community based programs via donation of all proceeds from the event.

While it is for a very serious cause, the show and V-Day event is a fun and entertaining catalyst through which we achieve these goals....so why not have a little fun ourselves amidst the somewhat stressful scrambling?

To that end, tonight the lovely ladies of Mighty Yawp Productions are having a VAJAMA PARTY! It's an old fashioned sleepover (BYOP - bring your own pajamas) and brainstorming/work session all in one, replete with music, wine, and lots of mexican food...a perfect plan for making work fun and having some great bonding time before the work gets even crazier!

Jealous yet?

(and there just might be a video post to come of tonight's festivities, so stay tuned...)

Meet the Vaginas

Things are progressing along at breakneck speed for our V-Day event; thankfully no one has broken their neck or had an anneurism as of yet (the as of yet being highly stressed here). We presently find ourselves to be equal parts passionate excitement and overwhelmed balls of stress, the stronger sentiment dictated by the moment alone.

The division of labor has been an incredibly helpful thing here; each of us calling upon our individual strengths to help create a whole. For example, I seem to have a truly incredible talent for e-mailing Emma incessantly and freaking out with great pomp and circumstance, ever convinced I am forgetting something truly crucial.

I suppose I should now introduce the vagina goddesses properly - that would be the correct order of things here, right? At least the ones that I have met with at length thus far and am therefore qualified to introduce.

The divine Emma brought us all together, intrinsically knowing that despite our varied perspectives and backgrounds we would all somehow mesh and mold together to create a perfect working team while retaining our own eccentricities and quirks, which are all infintely charming if I may say so (and I may, as this is our blog, not yours). Em is the purple glitter glue that binds us together with supreme flair and Aussie spunk. She is all heart and passion, and this baby we are birthing is initially of her creation.

Sarah Jane is our fiery red headed bastard stepchild. Not really. She's actually a kick-ass Kiwi with an electrifying personality and smile and a truly contagious excitement. Her extreme enthusiasm is an energizing and renewing spark that keeps the creative bonfire blazing brightly.

Bobby is sort of the earth mother of the pack; though this perception is undoubtedly hightened by the circumstance of her being with child at the moment. Lest you think her merely defined by her pregnancy, let me reassure you that she is so much more and that her impending motherhood only lends that much more of a positive energy to her aura of calm yet simultaneously charged enlightenment.

Aisling is an almost explosive (in a good way) powerful force in her inherent strength and determination. She has a gentle yet firm pursuasiveness that will not accept less than your absolute best while managing to be infintely encouraging at the same time. She's all Irish moxy and mischief with heart.

I have yet to get to know Sandra, but from her e-mails and the knowledge of her that I have gleaned from the other women involved, I am most definitely looking forward to it.

And me, well I'm quite silly and dorky with a great penchant for both stress and fun. More importantly, I'm thrilled to be working with these women, and said so add nauseum at our most recent meeting. Between that and the incessant e-mailing, I expect to be fired at any moment. Until then, I'm relishing the time with these incredible hysterically funny gorgeous compassionate women. I guess you just don't put this much into a fundraising project unless you are a certain breed of phenomenal woman.

Of course all of these accolades are coming before we've all cycled up.

-Sara Jo

SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT PROUD

CLICK ABOVE TO SEE THE VIDEO!