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Students,
Faculty Protest Ban
Ateneo Disapproves Campus Staging of ‘The Vagina
Monologues’
By Alfred A. Araya Jr.
© CyberDyaryo, 10 March 2002
MOVED BY the
power of a play in which women talk about the most intimate part
of their bodies to convey stories of abuse, silenced sexuality,
and violence against women, four young college students thought
it would be a good idea to stage the play within their campus.
Excited and
confident, Ateneo de Manila University students Rabbi Gannaban,
20, Missy Maramara, Tebs Gomez, 20, and Yagi Olaguera, 22, never
thought that staging the acclaimed play "The Vagina Monologues
" (TVM) would become such a big issue at the Jesuit school
known for its liberal ideas.
After auditions
were held and a cast of actors formed, an administrative memo dated
Feb.13 came down from the office of Anna Miren Gonzalez-Intal, vice-president
of the Loyola Schools of Ateneo, disapproving of the staging of
TVM "as an official activity of the Ateneo de Manila University."
The decision
created a stir within the university. At a jam-packed forum in campus,
students and faculty members aired their protests, and position
papers of some department heads questioned the process through which
the decision was reached.
The ball now
reportedly rests on an ad-hoc committee formed by the Loyola Schools
administration tasked to decide whether to uphold or reverse the
Intal decision.
Pushing through
anyway
However,
the four Ateneans, who are producing the play, with some 33 cast
members (composed of Ateneo students, faculty, and alumni), have
decided to push through with TVM on an earlier agreed date—even
if it has to be held outside the university, and not as an official
school activity.
The Filipino
version of the TVM, "Usapang Puki" will be staged on Friday,
March 1 at 8 pm, and on March 2 (Saturday), at 5pm and 8pm at the
Boston Tea and Coffee House, on the fifth floor of the FBR Arcade
(beside Angelino’s restaurant) just in front of the Ateneo,
on Katipunan Avenue. Tickets are at P150 each.
Gomez and Olaguera
said that if the ad hoc committee reverses the Intal decision before
March 2, they will stage the 5 pm March 2 performance at the Ateneo.
As of late afternoon February 28, no decision had been issued.
The four Ateneans
are self-confessed fans of TVM, which has been running for two years
now in various venues in and out of the country, produced by the
New Voice Company, a local theater group. The four had wanted the
university to join the V-Day’s college campaign, as other universities
and colleges in the country have already produced or are in the
process of staging TVM in their campuses.
TVM is at the
center of the V-Day campaign held internationally every year from
February 8 to March 8 (International Women’s Day). V-Day is
a global movement that helps anti-violence organizations while drawing
public attention worldwide to violence against women and girls (including
rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sexual slavery).
Erase society’s
embarrassment
Written
by playwright Eve Ensler, who also founded V-Day, TVM is based on
interviews of more than 200 women around the world on sensitive
subjects like abuse, rape, mutilation, as well as women’s bodies
and their sexuality.
It also seeks
to erase society's embarrassment at hearing the word vagina, which
actresses repeat throughout the play.
"Our purpose
[for wanting to stage the play] is to erase the stigma of the vagina,"
said Olaguera, who noted how vagina has been touted as a dirty word.
"There is power in the word when you can say it as it is without
[the embarrassment and shame]."
Gomez added,
"The power is in realizing that it’s just a word used
to describe a body part—like the hand or the head."
But then again,
from Gomez’ view, it was the word vagina and its Filipino counterpart—puki—that
"scandalized" the school administration, and made them
decide to ban the play’s production on campus.
The reasons
cited by Intal in the memo were based on the evaluation of Ma. Cristina
Astorga, chair of the Theology department, who read the Filipino
script of TVM.
Vagina as
metaphor
In her appraisal of the text, Astorga said, "Though the
play claims that ‘vagina’ (puki) is only used as a metaphor
for woman, its repetitious use in the play like a refrain, as puki
is heard at almost every turn, grates on the psyche, until the metaphor
is lost. What is left is the physical image of the vagina."
Also, "The
play does not treat deeply the issues and problems of woman it seeks
to address. Merely describing these problems in explicit titillating
language makes it no different from reading about them in tabloids
… Offering no critical or refreshing insight, the play leaves
one feeling satiated and blasé about issues and problems
that are so ever repeatedly told and retold."
Astorga recommended
to the students, "If you choose a play, choose one with more
artistic value and which engages the audience in a critical discourse."
She further
stressed, "There is no need for vagina monologues …What
we need is a vibrant, critical, high-level and balanced conversation
and dialogue which can open new perspectives and horizons on problems
that we so often hear and read about."
In her memo,
Intal said the students could stage the play provided they "do
so as individuals, in a venue of their choice outside the Ateneo."
Department
chairs get involved
The memo
drew strong reactions from students and members of the faculty.
The next day, February 14, the chairs of the Departments of English,
Filipino, Interdisciplinary Studies and the Director of the Fine
Arts Program issued a position letter raising their objections to
the memo.
They questioned
the process by which the decision banning the staging of TVM in
the Ateneo was made, saying, "We believe that the process of
making decisions on these matters should not rest on a single person
but on a collective."
They said the
chairs and/or faculty of the literature and fine arts departments,
and representatives of "other concerned sectors" should
have been included in the decision-making.
The repetition
of the word "puki," which was raised in Intal’s memo,
they said, "is to emphasize the oppression of women—how
women’s sexuality has been silenced, suppressed, and regulated."
The text was
also not "titillating," they argued, saying, "How
can lines about a rifle being shoved into the vagina of a Bosnian
woman be ‘titillating’?"
Not everyone
in the Theology Department agreed with Astorga’s evaluation
of the TVM Filipino script either.
Manuel Tejido,
associate professor of Theology, appealed for a reversal of Intal’s
decision Otherwise, he warned, "College students may lose their
moral and spiritual moorings on the infinite worth of human persons
and their freedom to follow their own conscience."
Tejido also
underscored the academic freedom of the university. The play, he
said, "is not inconsistent with the Catholic Christian and
Jesuit character of the Ateneo."
Big turnout
at forum
The support of the students and the faculty members was evident
in the big turnout at an afternoon forum held at the Ateneo on February
18 organized by the Sanggunian ng mga Mag-aaral, the university
student council.
Among those
present were Astorga, some faculty members, TVM cast members, two
of the three writers who had translated the text into Filipino,
Glecy Atienza and Luna Sucat (the third is Joi Barrios), and actress
Monique Wilson, artistic director of New Voice Company.
Intal was informed
about the forum but did not attend, according to Joseph Quesada,
president of the student council.
Reiterating
her review of the TVM script, Astorga said that to her, the use
of the TVM as a literary device has "only shock value"
but not "insight value."
Benilda Santos,
reading the statement of the Filipino Department which she chairs,
said that Astorga’s saying that "There is no need for
vagina monologues" was like saying "There is no need for
literary discourse."
Wilson spoke
of the individual person’s capacity to decide and appreciate
or not the value of a literary piece such as TVM, which was applauded
by the students. "I think there can be no higher measure above
our own mind that can tell us what the measures should be. Who has
the right to tell us what morality is to us? Who has the right to
tell us what is a better literary piece than the other?"
Human value
More
than the artistic and literary value of TVM, she added, is a "human
value", which drew another round of applause. "If we think
there is no value in hearing what these stories are saying, then
it is almost equivalent to saying these stories are not worth listening
to."
Answering a
student’s question about the possibility of celebrating V-Day
without TVM, Wilson said the play is crucial because it is the "catalyst"
for the current campaign. "So, why would you remove the root?"
The administration
may have "a right to censor material, but don’t call yourself
a university," said Ricardo G. Abad, director of the Fine Arts
Program. "A university promotes discourse [and] multiplicity
of perspectives. People discuss, conflict and battle in the university,
they don’t impose standards like these," he added, drawing
applause all around.
Abad also wondered
about the fuss over the word puki, saying people in the countryside
don’t find it offensive. "The word is taken for granted."
He also questioned
why Intal used "only one source," referring to Astorga’s
evaluation, as a basis for the ban. Perhaps, he opined, the administration
went through a "moral panic".
Responding to
Abad’s remarks, Astorga pointed out that there is academic
discourse in the Ateneo but as a Jesuit university, it "operates
within certain parameters [and] visions."
"We are
a university but at the same time, we are a Jesuit Catholic university,"
Astorga told the forum. Earlier, she said, "Just as [you have]
your freedom to watch the play, the institution has also its freedom
to make its own stand."
Monique Wilson,
however, pointed out, "A lot of Jesuit schools that are doing
TVM and V-Day have actually written letters of support and endorsement",
and that many Jesuit schools abroad are both staging the play and
supporting the campaign.
Doubtful
decision process
Gannaban, a 4th-year theater-arts student, who is co-directing
the play with Maramara, said in an interview with CyberDyaryo on
February 20 that, like the department heads, they also doubted the
process that led to the administration’s decision to ban TVM:
"The Theology Department cannot assume to be an expert in the
dramatic arts".
Even with the
support of the faculty members, in the end, the four students decided
that with the play date coming closer, they had no choice but to
find a venue outside the university.
But Olaguera
and Gomez pointed out that one positive result of the administration’s
decision to ban the play in the campus was that it got talked about,
even among Ateneans, who, they admitted, have been tagged as "apathetic
rich kids."
However, it
was a big disappointment that they could not stage TVM as an official
Ateneo activity. They said what happened has changed how they see
their university and soon-to-be alma mater. As Gannaban said, "History
will say that, once upon a time, the Ateneo did not allow the staging
of TVM in the university."
Olaguera said
the Ateneo today is not the school he has always known it to be.
"Iba ang pagkakakilala ko sa Ateneo (This is a different Ateneo
from the one I used to know)," he said. Ateneo, he stressed,
has always been known as a liberal institution of learning.
"Nakakahiya
sa mga taga-UP (People from the University of the Philippines must
be laughing at us)," he said, adding that the Ateneo has become
a laughing-stock among the schools in the area because of the decision.
"It sucks
that we have to do [the play] outside [of the Ateneo]," Gomez
told CyberDyaryo.
Gannaban said,
"We’re disappointed that we’re still being treated
like kids….[But] if they don’t trust us to deal with a
matter like this intelligently, it means they don’t trust themselves
as administrators." (CyberDyaryo)
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