Lindsay Burns stars in the one-woman show The Vajayjay Monologues
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Pumphouse Theatres
Wednesday, September 19 - Saturday, September 29
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With Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart last year, Lindsay Burns proved — in the words of one critic — that she had “ovaries made of solid brass.” Her ballsy, plucky political lampooning continues this year with her latest one-woman show, The Vajayjay Monologues.
“They both have a very sharp sense of humour,” says Burns. “At the end of Dough, while I might have questioned some of the stuff that Martha brought on, I do say that here's a woman who went to jail stoically and served her time without crying or complaining about it. This one isn't supposed to be a kick in the box to The Vagina Monologues, either.”
Vajayjay beats up on popular culture just as Dough did, but this time it's through the lens of Eve Ensler's famous performance, The Vagina Monologues. Emulating the early ’90s piece structurally, this time Burns lays a bead against the likes of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and, uh, Oprah.
“Mainly, what the show is talking about is that Britney Spears feels no shame in showing us her vagina, that Oprah has begun calling her vagina her vajayjay, that there are new birth control pills that will eliminate periods, and that you can now outsource childbirth and have a woman in India carry your child for you,” says Burns. “How did we go from vagina to vajayjay in 10 short years, and are we choosing to regress? Eve Ensler's point was that we should have acceptance and empowerment about our vaginas, but then why is labiaplasty the new, hot plastic surgery?”
One portion of the show lampoons Ensler's vignette, “my vagina is angry,” by presenting the audience with a vagina so stiff and full of botox that it can no longer express emotion. Though there's a certain glee in knowing that we now live in a society where rich women pay exorbitant amounts of money to have their vaginas injected with poison, it does justify Burns's deep concern for the state of our culture. It's this dual-layered criticism that defines the performance.
“(The criticism is levelled at) the way that women are choosing to treat themselves. It's not Eve Ensler's fault,” says Burns. “Reading the play, it feels very pre-9/11. For instance, we can see pictures of Britney’s beaver whenever we want, but we can't see pictures of coffins coming home from Iraq.”
When Dough opened, it ran the first weekend after Martha Stewart had been released from jail, and Vajayjay promises to be no less timely. Though it deals with topics anyone who's ever stood in line at a grocery store should be familiar with, Burns hopes that the show's resonance with popular culture will continue well after the curtain closes. Like Dough, she hopes that the more the audience learns of the topics, the funnier the show becomes in hindsight.
“I feel like this is my sophomore album,” says Burns. “And sophomore albums are the ones where people will listen to their favourite band and go, 'oh, they suck now, they changed. They sold out.' I don't think I sold out. We were supposed to look at our vaginas and heal our relationships with our sex. But if we've healed, then why are we so fucked up about it?”
