'The Veiled Monologues' hits the stage

Eve Ensler hit a nerve with her hugely popular show "The Vagina Monologues," in which she interviewed women about their bodies and their sex lives, and then presented their frank stories on stage. It turned out that women had a lot to say about the subject, giving voice to lots of silent suffering.

And now writer-director Adelheid Roosen may have taken the next logical step with "The Veiled Monologues." She performed in the Dutch adaptation of "The Vagina Monologues," but, she says, "I felt there was something missing."

She saw an opportunity for the show to address the issues of non-Western women.

"I wanted to make a piece that informed the world," explains Roosen. "To let the world see and meet this other culture and to try to break the judgmental idea that the Arabian world is your enemy."

<p style="text-indent: 0in;"> The result is "The Veiled Monologues," stories of Muslim women, performed by Muslim women. The American Repertory Theatre presents the show, Oct. 16-21 at Zero Arrow Theatre, in Cambridge.

While the show's name leads to comparisons to Eve Ensler's play, Roosen stresses that the two productions are quite different.

But the creative process sounds similar. To create the show, Roosen traveled through the Netherlands and interviewed women who were raised in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. They talked about sexuality and their relationships with men. Roosen describes the experience as being a "tourist in my own country."

"When I interviewed the women in Holland, they were honest and open," says Roosen. "Yes, some had shame, but for us, shame is something we work with and don't deny. That's a concept I love."

She says the resulting 12 monologues are poignant, touching and riveting, covering issues like nakedness, desire, forced marriages and marital rapes.

Roosen originally wrote the play for western audiences with the hope of introducing a foreign culture and to break down stereotypes about Muslim women. However, its subject matter is only one of the hurdles the play will have to get over for its first trip across the pond.

For starters, the actors all come from a Muslim background and English is their third language (the play was performed in Dutch). Last summer, during a general rehearsal at a festival in the Berkshires, Roosen and her cast found help in an enthusiastic (and talented) fan.

Tina Packer, the esteemed founder of Shakespeare & Company, saw the performance and offered voice lessons to the cast for two weeks.

"She had the same reaction as the public in Holland," says Roosen. "She said that she realized that even though these four women had different rituals, she was just like them."

Roosen is used to Packer's reaction.

Since debuting in 2003, the play has been staged all across Europe. It's been performed in mosques and within the walls of Parliament where an open debate followed. The show has played to a wide array of audiences, from appreciative Muslim women to a teenage Muslim boy who saw the play for a class and called it "beautiful and courageous."

At the time, the cast was self-conscious about the boy, but soon realized that the theme of the play was to break down barriers and fear.

"It's so easy for people to get frightened," says Roosen. "It's not in your heart or soul to act like that. Society is covered by a blanket of fear and I'm working like hell to open that blanket up."

The show faced its biggest test in November of 2004, when a young Muslim fundamentalist assassinated Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a well-known political "troublemaker." At the time, Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam, asked the public to bang pots and pans in Dam Square in honor of the fallen filmmaker.

Roosen and her cast wondered if it was still appropriate to stage the show with tensions running high. But days after the assassination, and with the sound of pots and pans echoing in the distance, the cast of "The Veiled Monologues" took the stage and began the play with the following statement: "We came to make noise from the heart. If we can touch each other's hearts, then there's hope."

"The passion in my work is very much in the here and now," says Roosen. "I really want this show to have a ripple effect on society."

"The Veiled Monologues"

Oct. 16-21