Ella Joyce, Dr. Rovenia 'Ro'  Brock, funny lady Queen Aisha, Lisa Raye, Flava of Love’s London ‘Deelishis’ Charles, Taj Johnson-George (SWV), and Ayanna Gregory, daughter of civil rights activist, Dick Gregory gave sobering performances as each actress revealed individualistic monologues that described the joy, suffering, and pain of owning the female’s body part.  

Queen Aisha warmed the crowd with her comedic visual about how First Lady, Michelle Obama’s own ‘down there’ may have responded after the kiss her husband, President Obama, gave her at the Inauguration.

“President Obama wanted to slobber her down, but Michelle wasn’t ready for that, so he gave her a little peck and didn’t go whole hog”, said Queen Aisha.  “Then her vagina started percolating”, added Aisha.

As one would imagine, it is a play about vaginas:  The ‘down there’, the ‘coochie snorter’, the ‘P’ word, and other ‘pet’ names used in the play to describe the female body part. 

Women recall encounters with past loves and the intertwined thoughts, fears, likes and dislikes of their vagina.

"The play is off the chain", said saxophonist Mike Phillips.  "It puts you in a perspective where you have to listen.  Power comes through knowledge.  You have to know what women go through, and how they think to understand women."

Likewise, the play offers a comedic view to highlight the damaging affects of domestic abuse against women, and comes on the very same day that singer, Chris Brown is allegedly charged in a domestic battery dispute with girlfriend, and Pop star, Rihanna.

V-Day, is a call to action to highlight the abuse of women in hopes of bringing an end to domestic abuse, of all kinds, against women.  While reports of women and little girls in Bosnia, Kosovo, and South Africa tell grimacing tales of suffering that comes at the hands of rape and genital mutilation, domestic violence against women here in the US is also a troubling statistic.

"I thought the play was good", said activist, Dick Gregory.  It's kind of sad, he added, "but I'm aware of it (domestic violence), and guilty of some of it."

DC area domestic abuse survivor, Yvette Cade, was present to give her testimony of domestic violence.  In 2006 Cade was set on fire by her estranged husband.

To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $60 million and educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it. www.vday.org.   The plays' popularity have included productions in other languagaes to include Spanish, and Chinese.

The all-Black cast of characters, brilliantly directed and produced by Yetta Young, will travel to Atlanta and Houston, Texas in the coming months.

Both men and women we interviewed called the play "informative".

While other productions have been around over the last ten or so years ( see A  | B), the cast of the production at Howard was by far one of the best, and a definite must see!

Previous performances of The Monologues featured DC area icons such as Sister 2 Sister Magazine’s, Jamie Foster Brown, and author of exoctic books, Zane.

For other sites dedicated to the cause, click here.

View photos from the play.