The Alchemy of Apology: An Intimate Conversation with Author of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler, Tony Award winning playwright, performer, and activist, is the author of The Vagina Monologues, 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. The play ran for over 10 years in the U.K., Mexico and France. In 2004, Ensler performed her play The Good Body on Broadway, followed by a 20-city national tour. Emotional Creature ran in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Paris, Berkeley and New York throughout 2011. In 2015, O.P.C. had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater and in 2016, Avocado debuted at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and became part of The Fruit Trilogy, which had a run at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. In 2016, Eve adapted and premiered her memoir In the Body of the World, which she performed at the American Repertory Theater directed by Diane Paulus. In January 2018, Eve will perform the play at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City. Eve’s other plays include The Treatment, Necessary Targets, Ladies, Lemonade, Extraordinary Measures, Mango, 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 and co-edited A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer, an anthology of writings about violence against women published in 2007. In 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 critically acclaimed memoir In the Body of the World a visionary memoir of separation and connection – to the body, the self, and the world was published by Metropolitan Books in 2013. Ensler’s film credits include an HBO film version of her performance 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 which won the Freedom of Expression Award at the Sundance Film Festival and premiered nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.” in December 2003. Ensler has written numerous articles for The Guardian, Huffington Post, International Herald Tribune, Elle France, La Republica and Time Magazine. She was awarded the 2011 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award. Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, an Obie, and Glamour’s Woman of the Year in addition to many 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.” Ms. Ensler is the recent recipient of the Lucille Lortel 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award and a 2018 Lily Award. 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. 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 Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Indian Country, and Iraq. In 2012, Eve initiated ONE BILLION RISING which has run now for five years and is the largest mass action campaign against violence against women and girls. Annually, activists rise in 200 countries through dance and creative expression. V-Day has received numerous acknowledgements and awards and is one of the top-rated organizations on both Charity Navigator and Guidestar.

Faye D’Souza is an award-winning journalist, who has changed the way News is covered on Indian Television by focusing the attention on the issues that matter to the citizens rather than those that fuel the emotions of partisan debates. Faye’s calm, researched style of hosting news shows prioritises information over opinions. Her focus on accountability of government, responsible taxation, safety of women and children, education, health and urban development has also resulted in several policy changes and impact developments that have proven that a journalist can still bring about improvements in the status quo. Faye is the journalist for the millennials – young, fresh and brutally honest. She spent her initial years in the world of business news with CNBC TV 18, where she was in the thick of things related to state policies, economic offences and personal finance. She subsequently joined the TIMES NETWORK as it was stamping its authority into television news in 2008. Faye was the Executive Editor of Mirror Now. She has a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication and Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and English Literature.

Rahul Bose Called the ‘Indian art house icon’, by TIME magazine, Rahul Bose won the Best Actor award at the Singapore Film Festival in 2000, the John Schlesinger award for Runner Up - Best Debut Director in 2002 and the Excellence in Direction award from the Indian Federation of Directors in 2017. His awards in the field of activism include: Indian Youth Icon of the Year - Social Justice, 2008, the Green Globe award for Climate Change, 2010, the Lt. Governor’s Commendation Award for Services to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 2012, the Hakim Khan Sur award for National Integration, 2013, GQ's Man of the Year, 2015 for Philanthropy and GQ’s Man of the Year 2017, Social Justice through Cinema. Rahul has lectured on gender justice, leadership and cinema at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT and Columbia University amongst others. Perhaps most significantly, Rahul played rugby for India for eleven years, in 17 internationals. Rahul is the founder of two NGOs: The Foundation, dedicated to the equalisation of opportunity through education of children and HEAL, devoted to the prevention of child sexual abuse.