The FDFAA, in collaboration with Fort Dodge Pride Fest, is staging “The Vagina Monologues” by Eve Ensler. “The Vagina Monologues” is a play featuring a series of personal monologues dealing with different aspects of the feminine experience read by a diverse group of women. The play runs about an hour and a half.

The FDFAA production of “The Vagina Monologues” stars Nicole Tracy, Rhiannon Rippke-Koch, Jamie Varangkounh, Alyssa Sparks and Caitlin Delaney Grogan, and is directed by FDFAA Director Shelly Bottorff and FD Pride Fest Organizer Kyrie Borsay.

The show runs at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Tickets are $15 and are available at the door or can be purchased at Shiny Top Brewing. Part of the proceeds of the ticket sales will go toward the 2023 Fort Dodge Pride Festival.

“The Vagina Monologues” is for mature audiences only, but its messages are ones everyone needs to hear, the women involved say.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Jamie Varangkounh reads "My Angry Vagina," a scene from "The Vagina Monologues."

“I think women are inherently afraid to talk about their bodies or to discuss any of the things that we talk about on stage,” Sparks said. “These are real stories of real women that we are sharing with more women to get the word out that it is OK to talk about our bodies. It’s OK to have these weird things happen and to talk about them.”

Borsay agreed that the show helps reduce the stigma around talking about women’s bodies. Borsay is a distinguished professor at Iowa Central Community College and she said she’s invited many of her young female students to see the show.

“I’m excited for them to hear the conversation,” she said.

Varangkounh said the spectrum of different issues covered in the monologues is powerful — from stories of rape and torture to female genital mutilation, and from using tampons and shaving one’s vagina to experiencing orgasm.

“In this forum, it’s kind of eye-opening, but yet accessible to all because it kind of brings the uncomfortable to a comfortable place,” she said.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Rhiannon Rippke-Koch performs the monologue "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy," as part of "The Vagina Monologues" at a rehearsal for the FDFAA/Fort Dodge Pride Fest production.

“I like the feeling of empowerment it gives each person as they are doing their monologues,” Rippke-Koch added. “It’s a sense of freedom to talk about these things and to not feel alone — that there are other women out there that feel these ways.”

Grogan said she’s been looking forward to being in a production of “The Vagina Monologues.”

“I think it’s an important discussion to have,” she said. “We need to be able to talk about this stuff. This is all real and people need to be able to talk about it because the only thing that happens by not talking about it is people getting hurt.”

The women in the show encourage those who have already seen “The Vagina Monologues” to buy a ticket and see it again.

Borsay has seen this production a number of times, in “vastly different” times in her life.

“Each time, I’ve gotten something different out of the performance and I love that about it,” she said.

Varangkounh agreed.

“Everybody can get a little bit of something different from it, and it will change again,” she said. “So just because you saw it once, come back and see it again because you will get a different message and a different meaning — it’ll hit you differently depending on where you are in your stage of life.”

Tracy remembered the first time she performed in a production of this play and seeing all the monologues come together.

“It was eye-opening,” she said. “It was raw, it was touching and it felt so many pieces of all your emotions that I was blown away.”

“The Vagina Monologues” aren’t just for women, the cast members say.

“I think we need men to come, too,” Varangkounh said. “I think it is just as important for men to hear these stories.”