A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer is coming to Stuttgart –
February 4 at 20:00 hrs in MERLIN
February 8 at 20:30 hrs in KULTURWERK
February 15 at 20:00 hrs in THEATER AM OLGAECK
In honor of V-Day 2019, NEAT will perform the sister piece to Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking theater phenomenon, The Vagina Monologues. Frauenberatungs- und Therapiezentrum Fetz and Frauen helfen Frauen are once again V-Day Stuttgart’s beneficiaries. For the fourth year in a row, Stuttgart’s English theater-hungry audiences will be part of what has become a Stuttgart community tradition of resistance! Stories of war, sexuality, poverty, patriarchy, resistance, desire, and imagination are brought to life through words, dance and music.
It is a privilege to be able to do theater in order to raise money for women’s crisis centers. Not just an enjoyment, but a privilege that we can enjoy because we are not suffering through a humanitarian crisis, a civil war, an attack on our culture or religion, or dodging the bullets from greed-driven madmen.
I can’t tell you how much we need theater as an act of resistance to violence. This is our contribution; however small or ironically, undramatic.
For the past four years, we have tried our hardest to give voices to those women and girls who have been impacted by violence. We have sought to bring attention to and educate everybody on a subject that almost nobody wants to talk about. But speaking the unspoken takes center stage in this moving, funny, and intense piece of theater.
How do you talk about violence? How do we open up a conversation with our neighbors about domestic violence, rape, abuse, and the general systematic oppression of women and girls? How can a theater troupe convince a community that genuine attention to violence is the only way to eliminate it in the future?
We do it with hope. We do it with the involvement of the community and of women and men and young people and old. The writings in A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer are elegant and sad but so graceful that you can’t help but feel that we can make things better. You have the power to help. We can change the world, even if it is only one person at a time.
I can’t help but close my eyes very tightly and see the future for women when the very mention of violence is met with disgust and abhorrence. I can’t wait another moment until all the survivors are believed, all the voices that were locked behind closed doors liberated, and all the patriarchy relegated to the history books alongside the atrocities we all have learned to beware of repeating. We must speak because staying silent is a crime.
Our cast comes from Iran, Germany, England, Palestine, the Congo, The United States, Bosnia, Spain, Nigeria, India, and Croatia. And with all that is happening in the world, with the word BORDER being shouted and echoing in every corner of the earth, and that imaginary line between people being used as a tool of war, we at V-Day Stuttgart are grateful to be bringing you a piece of theater that will not shut anyone out. We seek to lift up the voices of all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, ability or economic level.
Please join us in contributing once again to our community of Stuttgart. Bring your friends, bring your enemies, bring open minds or closed hearts. We shall not be silent. We will be there, waiting for you.
New English American Theater Stuttgart 