Eve Ensler (American)


 

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Eve Ensler, Tony Award winning playwright, performer, and activist, is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries, including sold-out runs at both Off-Broadway’s Westside Theater and on London’s West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment), and run for 10 years in Mexico City and Paris.

In 2004, Ensler performed her play The Good Body on Broadway in New York City. This was followed by a 20-city national tour in 2005. In August 2010 Emotional Creature was first workshopped at New York Stage and Film at Vassar College followed by Johannesburg, South Africa, and Paris, France. The show premiered in the United States at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and then moved to Off-Broadway.  The success of her play Avocado, which opened to rave reviews in 2015 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and at the Latitude festival in the UK inspired her to create The Fruit Trilogy. This trio of short plays comprises Avocado, Pomegranate and Coconut and explores the female experience of human trafficking, sexual abuse, refugee life and body image and was presented at the Southbank’s WOW- Women Of The World Festival in March 2016 followed by a run at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Her play O.P.C. recently had its world premiere at American Repertory Theater where she also debuted and performed In the Body of the World, based on her memoir in May of 2016, directed by Tony Award winner Diane Paulus.

Eve’s other plays include Mango, The Treatment, Necessary Targets, Conviction, Ladies, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary Measures and Reef and Particle, Necessary Targets and Here which was filmed live by Sky Television in London, UK in the summer of 2010.

Ensler released Insecure at Last, a political memoir in 2006 as well co-editing A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer, an anthology of writings about violence against women.

In February 2010,  I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World was released by Random House and made The New York Times Best Seller list.

Her newest book, In the Body of the World, a visionary memoir of separation and connection – to the body, the self, and the world – published by Metropolitan Books, met critical acclaim upon its release in spring 2013.

Other books include House.Vagina Warriors, words by Ensler and photos by Joyce Tenneson, published by Bulfinch Press for V-Day 2005.

Ensler’s film credits include an HBO film version of The Vagina Monologues (2002). She also produced the film What I Want My Words to Do to You, a documentary about the writing group she led at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. The film premiered and won the Freedom of Expression Award at Sundance Film Festival and premiered nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.” in December 2003. She recently co-directed the documentary short One Billion Rising which premiered in the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Ensler has written numerous articles for The Guardian, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Utne ReaderInternational Herald Tribune, Glamour Magazine and Marie Claire as well as a regular column in O Magazine.

She was awarded the 2011 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, which recognizes an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of humanitarian, social service, or charitable organizations. Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting and an Obie, in addition to a number of honorary degrees.

In November 2009, Ensler was named one of US News & World Report’s ”Best Leaders” in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School. In 2010 she was named one of “125 Women Who Changed Our World” by Good Housekeeping Magazine. In 2011 she was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.”

Ensler’s experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls. She has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive.

Today, V-Day raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Ensler’s award-winning play The Vagina Monologues and other artistic works. In 2013, over 5,800 V-Day benefits took place. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $100 million; educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it; crafted international educational, media, and PSA campaigns; reopened shelters; and funded over 13,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Egypt, and Iraq.

V-Day stages large-scale benefits and produces innovative gatherings, films, and campaigns to educate and change social attitudes towards violence against women, including the documentary Until The Violence Stops. In addition, V-Day staged: the December 2003 V-Day delegation trip to Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan; community briefings on the missing and murdered women of Juarez, Mexico; the Afghan Women’s Summit; the March 2004 delegation to India; the Stop Rape Contest; the Indian Country Project; Love Your Tree; the June 2006 two-week festival of theater, spoken word, performance, and community events Until the Violence Stops: NYC; the 2008 V-Day 10-year anniversary events V to the Tenth at the New Orleans Arena and Louisiana Superdome; the Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource: Power To The Women and Girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo Campaign; the V-Girls Campaign, and the V-Men Campaign. V-Day’s most recent global campaign,ONE BILLION RISING, galvanized over one billion women and men on a global day of action towards ending violence against women and girls in February 2013.

V-Day has received numerous acknowledgements and awards and is one of the top-rated organizations on both Charity Navigator and Guidestar.