The VaChina Monologues
Fan Popo’s 2013 short documentary explores how ‘The Vagina Monologues’ (1996), the iconic yet controversial play by Eve Ensler, has become an empowering tool for feminist and women’s groups all over China. The first theatrical performance in the PRC was translated and directed by Professor Ai Xiaoming of Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou) in 2003; since then enactments of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ (in Chinese ‘来自阴道’ lit. ‘from the vagina’), at times banned and partly censored, have taken over university campuses, theatres, cafes, villages, streets and public transport.
Ingrid Hotz-Davies (Prof. Dr. phil.) is teaching New English Literature and Gender Studies at Tübingen University and the director of the Center for Gender and Diversity Research. Her fields of interest are Gender/Queer Studies, Women’s Literature from the Renaissance to Today, Early Modern Literature and Communicating under conditions of (self)-censorship and interdiction