• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

V-Day interview: Annie Saunders – Producer and Actress

Written by Stephanie Sadler
Tuesday, 03 February 2009 00:00

This is Annie Saunders’ ninth year involved with V-Day. After her first performance in the “Vagina Monologues” in her home state of California and directing her own V-Day events in London, she is now producing and acting in London’s 10th anniversary shows at the New Players Theatre. She speaks to Seven about how to really love women on Valentine’s Day, the power of theatre and why it is so important that men are getting involved.

SS: You’re producing the V-Day events at the New Players Theatre this year. Have you ever acted in the show?

AS: I’m actually performing in both shows this year – “Because You Like to Look at It” in the Vagina Monologues and also in the new “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer”. I’ve been doing it since 2001, almost every year. The past three years have been my own shows. I’ve produced and organised them. Also, last year and the year before, I directed. I’ve done “The Dominatrix” and “The Woman who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy” most often. I’ve also done “My Angry Vagina” a few times. This year that’s a piece for four women in this show. It’s great, because it sort of has a little “Sex and the City” vibe, you know? Four women talking to each other. It’s really nice.

SS: Are there new monologues added every year?

AS: There’s a V-Day script which is downloadable from the website. Things are taken out every year; things are put in. New things. Every year, there are a bunch of optional monologues – five or six. Statistics will be updated. Also every year, there’s a spotlight monologue which is always about the current V-Day spotlight which focuses on violence against women in one region of the world – this year, Democratic Republic of Congo.

SS: Who decides the spotlight country and how much money goes to that cause rather than local organisations?

AS: Eve does. V-Day asks us that every performance, every campaign, donate 10% to the V-Day spotlight – 10% of their net profit, so after they pay for everything, all their expenses.

SS: Why aren’t you directing this year?

AS: Directing is not really my thing, but when I moved to England in 2003, I was looking for a V-Day project and I couldn’t find one so I thought, well, I’ll just do my own. Then, last year, Emma Jane and I directed together. She had never done any theatre directing before, but she was really interested. She’s amazing. This is her proper theatrical debut and she’s having a great time. You can talk to her about that.

SS: Tell me about this new show, “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer”.

AS: V-Day began in 1998. Eve toured the “Vagina Monologues” as a one-woman show for a year. Women were coming up to her and she thought how can I use the “Vagina Monologues” to help them? So she got all of these women together and decided on V-Day. They did a big show. That’s been happening for 10 years. Then, to mark the 10-year-aniversary, there was a big festival in New York in the summer of 2007 called Until the Violence Stops. That year, Eve asked that all these other playwrights, novelists, activists, actors, and screenwriters to write monologues for the 10th anniversary of V-Day. So there are 50 or so monologues in this new show. Eve wrote an introduction and a piece in it called “Fur is Back”.

You choose five to ten pieces from the book and perform them as a series of monologues. And in the book, similarly in the “Vagina Monologues”, there’s no stage direction; there’s nothing. It’s just words, so you can do whatever you want. With “A Memory, A Monologue”, there’s no previous performances to fall back on. You can’t watch it on YouTube and see what everyone else did. We’re doing a selection of ten pieces. Seven for women, two for men, and one for a man and a woman. It’s different every time.

“A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer” has only been available since 2008. It’s not commercially available as a performance piece. It’s a book. You can buy it, but you can’t perform it at all unless the performance is part of V-Day. This is not true of the “Vagina Monologues” which has many touring commercial performances. You can only ever see this during the V-Day season.

SS: How would you describe V-Day to someone who has never heard of it before?

AS: I talk to a lot of people like that – most of the people I talk to. I say V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women, founded by Eve Ensler who wrote The Vagina Monologues. Eve founded it as a way to help women by using creative performance. It happens all around the world. It’s built safe houses in Afghanistan, Africa, India, etc.

I also say that it’s a political movement, but it’s based on creativity, performance, beauty, art and love. It’s not based on anger or hatred or rage or vindication. Eve is doing a speaking tour in the States called “Turning Pain to Power”. And I think that is really her ethos. It’s about processing what has happened to you in your life or to the people around you and using it as a way to help other people, be creative, be powerful, be loving. It’s not about being angry or hurt or wronged or hateful. It’s all about love, really. It’s about making Valentine’s Day about really loving women, not just about commercially loving women. Let’s make it about really loving women.

SS: Why is theatre specifically such a powerful platform for this sort of thing?

AS: There’s a kind of honesty and truthfulness in it that isn’t characteristic of a lot of other kinds of entertainment. People don’t always get to witness in their daily lives someone just telling the truth about their experience and not having to respond. You don’t have to sit there thinking, what am I going to say? Do they feel like I’m listening? Do I have to say something in between? You know they don’t want anything from you. Even though it’s not a one to one conversation, there is a person there saying this in real time. It’s a totally unique experience. It has an effect on people where it allows them to listen for the truth of the story without feeling self-conscious or judgemental or removed. Also, the thing about these is that they’re funny and people respond to that. It shows people it’s okay to have a good time even if you’re being politically conscientious. It doesn’t always have to be really serious.

SS: Did you have a lot of people trying out for the shows?

AS: Yes. 700 people applied to audition. We auditioned 200 of them. We couldn’t audition everyone. There are 30 actors all together between both shows.

SS: What made you first want to get involved with the Monologues?

AS: I auditioned for another play in 2001 called “The Death of Bessy Smith” by Edward Albee which is very rarely done. It’s a really weird one-act play. They called me back and said, “We decided not to do ‘The Death of Bessy Smith’. It’s too weird. But we’re going to do the ‘Vagina Monologues’. Do you want to be in that?”

I saw it when it was just Eve. It must have been in 1999 in San Francisco. I remembered the part in the end where she asks everyone to stand up. I remember the show was really funny. It definitely stayed with me. I love Eve. And I met her, actually. She came out at the end of the show and met everyone.

SS: Tell me about the new V-Men project.

AS: Eve asked Mark Matousek to write one of the monologues and to pioneer a men’s movement within V-Day. He started this blog on the V-Day website called V-Men. He wrote an introduction and then invited men he knew to write about how violence against women affected them as men. A bunch of men submitted articles and one of them was a journalist called Jimmie Briggs. He and Mark started to develop more V-Day resources for men. At the big 10th anniversary celebrations in New Orleans, they did a six-man panel discussion about violence against women and Jimmie also read out his piece that he wrote for the website.

Currently, Mark, Jimmie and some other guys are developing a project called “Ten Ways to Love a Woman”. It’s a book and a curriculum that can be taken into schools or workshops for young men and boys. It’s also a performance piece and it’s a PSA that should be on the radio and posters. That is set to launch in autumn 2009. What’s also exciting is that they are going to do a performance at the World Cup in South Africa in 2010.

SS: Why is it such an important step for men to get involved?

AS: Violence against women is not always about men’s relationship to women; it’s about men’s relationship to other men. A lot of people disagree with that view. But, I think that even the most feminist men I know find it very difficult to say something, like in the locker room if someone is telling nasty jokes about women or saying something horrible about women. Even the most conscientious, sensitive, feminist, V-Day-loving men that I know are like, “I’m not gonna say shit. I’m just gonna disapprove from a distance.” And that’s not about women. That’s about men. It’s about men’s acceptance of the more subtle manifestations of violence against women and just acceptance of violence against women generally.

I picked up a newspaper yesterday and I just opened it to a random page. The front page was this black cab rape case. Inside the paper, there were three more rape stories – a story about a guy who killed his wife and some other attacks and then a guy who had murdered his wife because she had found out he was having an affair. And I just thought, this is one day, one newspaper. And okay, there are plenty of women who are not proactive about this, but it was like what Eve says: The fact that we are not outraged by that, the fact that we don’t look at that and think, what the fuck is going on? That’s the problem. The problem is that we’re like, “Oh yea, well, ya know….”

What’s really exciting is that now there are movements happening that are for men and not just women saying you should care about this.

SS: Anything else you’d like to add?

AS: The Double Club, a six-month art installation that is a Congolese restaurant and a night club is funded by the Prada Foundation and they are doing our Valentine’s Day party. They’re donating a portion of the proceeds to the V-Day campaign in the Congo. It’s open to the public and it’s on 14 February. It’s called V-Day at the Double Club and will have a special menu. People should book tables. It’s free to get in.

We’re also having a 10k run the next day to raise money. We’ve got some bills to pay. Under the auspices of VDay, you can pay people. You can pay anyone except the actors. All the performers have to donate their time because it’s part of the vibe. We’re going to at least try to pay people’s expenses and possibly a bit extra if we can. But we’d like to donate all the ticket sales, so we have quite a bit of money to raise in order to be able to do that yet. In reality, we’ll probably end up spending a bit of ticket money on paying for stuff, which is fine. That usually happens. We’ll still be donating quite a bit of money. Also, all the beneficiaries I’ve ever supported have always said to me, “Thanks for the donation, but the most amazing thing is the amount of awareness you got, how many people called up wanting to volunteer.” The sort of residual effect is really the most valuable and the most sustained.