Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Performing Arts Season News Release
For Immediate Release

March 26, 2002
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

Maria Conchita Alonso joins Santa Barbara
cast of The Vagina Monologues

Summary Facts:

Maria Conchita Alonso, star of stage, television and screen, joins Amy J. Carle and Michele Shay in the cast of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues for a limited seven-show engagement at UCSB Campbell Hall from Wednesday, April 10 through Sunday, April 14.

Maria Conchita Alonso is an alumna company member of The Vagina Monologues, having recently performed in Los Angeles and Miami. Born in Cuba and raised in Venezuela, she was crowned Miss Teenager of the World in 1971 and Miss Venezuela in 1975. She quickly became one of the most sought after actress in Latin America, starring in numerous telenovelas and feature films. After moving to the United States, she starred in films including Moscow on the Hudson, Colors, The Running Man, Vampire’s Kiss, The House of Spirits and Caught (for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination). Her television credits include HBO’s Teamster Boss, WTBS’s High Noon, My Husband’s Secret Life (for which she won an ALMA Award for Outstanding Lead Actress) and the mini-series Texas. She regularly guest stars on the acclaimed Showtime series Resurrection Blvd. Alonso made her Broadway debut to rave reviews in Kiss of the Spider Woman, making her the first South American woman to star on the Great White Way. In addition to her acting career, Alonso has recorded ten albums and has received three Grammy nominations.

Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, the Santa Barbara leg of the national tour of The Vagina Monologues is sponsored by the Santa Barbara Independent, Borders Books and the Peppertree Inn.

March 4, 2002
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

The National tour of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues to play a limited engagement at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, the celebrated and provocative play that has become a phenomenon worldwide, will play a limited seven-show engagement at UCSB Campbell Hall from Wednesday, April 10 through Sunday, April 14. The Vagina Monologues cast at UCSB will be Amy J. Carle, Michele Shay and a celebrity actor to be announced.

In The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler has given voice to a chorus of lusty, outrageous, poignant, brave, highly original and thoroughly human stories. Based on interviews with a diverse group of women, the play explores the humor, power, pain, wisdom, outrage, mystery and excitement hidden in vaginas. Having seen The Vagina Monologues, no one—woman or man—will look at the world the same way again.

The Vagina Monologues was originally produced in an OBIE Award-winning run in 1996 and later opened with Eve Ensler in its smash-hit Off-Broadway run at the Westside Theatre on October 3, 1999. Following that sold-out run, the play continued performances with three amazing women sharing the stage in multiple-week engagements. Since that time, it has toured the country and internationally. The text of The Vagina Monologues has also been used in four wildly successful benefit performances, entitled V-Day, which have raised millions of dollars to fight violence against women and girls. At V-Day 2001, which sold out the 18,000 seat-Madison Square Garden, Eve Ensler was joined by such stars as Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Calista Flockhart, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez, Terri Hatcher, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Queen Latifah and Amy Irving.

Amy J. Carle currently lives in Chicago. Her recent credits include her Jeff Award nominated performances as Amy in Jessica Goldberg’s Refuge (Collaboration Theatre) and Dawn in Howard Korder’s The Lights (Roadworks Productions, directed by Abby Epstein), The Winter’s Tale (Footsteps Theatre) and Stop Kiss (Naked Eye Theatre). Carle is a founding ensemble member of Roadworks Productions, performing in their midwest premieres of Eric Bogosian’s subUrbia, Charles Mee’s Orestes, and Paul Edwards’ adaptations of WAS and The Planets.

Michele Shay, an alumna company member of the New York production of The Vagina Monologues, is best known for her Tony nominated performance in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, for which she received Outer Critics Circle and NAACP awards. In addition to her extensive Broadway and Off-Broadway work, Shay has performed on film and television, including He Got Game with Denzel Washington, One True Thing with Meryl Streep, Family Law, Judging Amy and Henrietta Morgan on Another World.

Eve Ensler is an award-winning playwright, activist and screenwriter. Her many works for the stage include The Depot, Floating Rhonda and the Glue Man, Extraordinary Measures, Ladies, Scooncat and Lemonade. Her most recent play Necessary Targets, a gripping story of two American women, a Park Avenue psychiatrist and an ambitious young writer, who travel to Bosnia to help women refugees confront their memories of war, has had benefit performances on Broadway, at the National Theatre in Sarajevo and at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. The play began previews in New York on February 14, 2002. Ensler’s best-selling book of The Vagina Monologues was published by Villard Books. Necessary Targets and her new book The Good Body will be published by Random House. The 1999 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, Ensler recently starred in a performance of The Vagina Monologues that began airing on HBO on V-Day, 2002.

The Vagina Monologues is directed by Abby Epstein. Joe Mantello did the original New York staging. Abby Epstein is the Associate Director of The Vagina Monologues Off-Broadway and is currently directing the Spanish premiere of Los Monologos de la Vagina in Mexico City. She also worked with Eve Ensler on V-Day 2001, a global call to end violence against women. When not in Vaginaland, Abby continues to work on Broadway with Rent, which she recently directed in Mexico City, Barcelona and Madrid. Abby is the recipient of the Joseph Jefferson and LA Weekly Awards.

V-Day is a movement to end violence towards women. It produces cultural events to raise awareness and money for existing organizations. A vital, ongoing process that proclaims Valentine’s Day as V-Day, the movement seeks to reinvigorate efforts already underway and commence new initiatives in publicity, education and law. Three wildly successful celebrity performances of The Vagina Monologues in New York, London and Los Angeles, as well as performances at hundreds of colleges across the country, have raised thousands of dollars for local, national and international groups that work to stop violence against women. To learn more about V-Day, visit their website at www.vday.org.

Each evening’s performance will be followed by a discussion moderated by representatives from community and UCSB women’s groups and UCSB faculty. A portion of the opening night proceeds will benefit the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center. A community forum, “Why is it so hard to say the ‘V-word’?” will be held on Thursday, April 4 at 5 p.m. at the University Club of Santa Barbara, 1332 Santa Barbara Street. This event will feature a panel comprised of Anna Everett, UCSB Department of Film Studies, Mia Lundin, Certified Nurse Practitioner, Katherine Remak, K-Lite, and will be moderated by Sharon Hoshida, UCSB Women’s Center and Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee.

The Santa Barbara performances of The Vagina Monologues are presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by the Santa Barbara Independent, the Peppertree Inn and Borders Books. This residency is funded in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Funding for the hiring of a sign language interpreter for the Thursday, April 11 performance is provided by the California Arts Council in collaboration with the National Arts and Disability Center.

Tickets are $35 and $30 for the general public and $19, in limited availability, for UCSB students.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.

©2002 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara