In the final days before “The Vagina Monologues” opened in Grand Junction, a chorus of women, young and old, rehearsed on a simple stage at a church displaying signs supporting Black Lives Matter and Ukraine.
“If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?” belted out one actor.
A flurry of responses followed.
Sweatpants. A tattoo. A costume eye mask.
“An electrical shock device to keep unwanted strangers away,” replied one cast member.
For all its playful moments, the show is never silly. The whimsy always tells a bigger truth.
It’s been 30 years since “The Vagina Monologues” burst onto the theater scene. Based on real-life stories, the celebration of women and exploration of the dangers they face has been performed thousands of times around the world. It’s been staged an estimated 250 times here in Colorado, according to the V-Day campaign, a women’s advocacy group founded by the playwright.
The production hadn’t come to Grand Junction in more than a decade, however. Director Sabrina Jackman gets it. She calls much of what the show discusses "uncomfortable."
“It's something we don't talk about as a society,” she said. “It's something we shy away from.”
That’s why Three Sisters Theatre Company, the feminist troupe Jackman cofounded, wanted to put this on. Based on interviews with more than 200 women by playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler), the show is “almost like a roller coaster,” Jackman said. “You’re laughing hysterically, and then you’re crying.”
While many pieces are joyful, focusing on sexual awakening and even nicknames for vaginas, there is a lot of talk of sexual assault, as well. It’s difficult and important for people to hear that, too, Jackman said.
“Women's bodies are a tool of war, and women and children are being systematically raped as a tool of war,” she said.
Decades ago, the show became a huge hit at college campuses across the country. Actor A. Yvette Myrick first encountered it at an East Coast university where she worked. Now 60, she got excited when she heard it was coming to town.
"I'm like, this is what's really needed today. If we are going to keep what we fought for, this is the time,” she said.
It’s also a time when reproductive and voting rights are under attack, she went on. Other cast members talked about how the Epstein files have put sexual assault into daily conversation.
For many in the cast, being part of the show — and this theater company — feels like a safe haven.
When Chelsea Craine, 32, first found Three Sisters, she felt more at home in Grand Junction than she ever had.
“These are my people. This is my coven, my group,” she remembers thinking, “and I can be me and talk about whatever is important to me.”
Grand Junction is largely a conservative place, kind of famously so within Colorado. Here, voters have chosen Trump every time he was on the ballot. But it’s also home to a motivated progressive population, who showed up at last year’s No Kings rallies in droves.
When auditions were announced for “The Vagina Monologues,” Three Sisters got a huge response, with more people auditioning for the show than any of their past productions.
That made sense to 21-year-old Hannah Feeney. “There's a surprisingly large bubble in Grand Junction of liberal and queer people,” she said, with a joyful smile.
Feeney, a theater major at Colorado Mesa University with an impressive number of piercings and tattoos, believes many locals will “really appreciate and take a lot from the show.”
But she added, “And I think that there is a large part of Grand Junction that is going to hate this show and is going to want to walk out, or they're never going to get anywhere near the door.”
But Feeney also thinks that’s OK.
“They have to come across it when they're ready for it,” she said.
‘The Vagina Monologues' creator on its importance, 30 years later
When playwright V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, heard “The Vagina Monologues” was coming to Grand Junction, she said she was of two minds. One is amazement at the show’s journey. After debuting in New York City in 1996, it quickly spread into other cities, then smaller communities around the world. It’s been translated into 140 languages.
“I think what it just teaches us is that women have vaginas everywhere,” V told CPR News. “And the truth of the matter is that we want women to be safe everywhere. We want women to be free everywhere.”
There’s also a sadness, however, that this show is still needed. The 72-year-old hoped that by now women would feel free, enjoying their bodies and sexuality without fear, and the world would be well on its way to ending violence against them.
“So there's always that feeling I have of longing for the play to be outdated,” she said. Instead, she said, women need to stand up for themselves more “than we ever have.”
She believes that resistance to sexism and violence against women must be persistent, lest society regress to more oppressive times.
“I think until we've dismantled patriarchy, this play is going to be extremely relevant,” she said.
In the last three decades, she’s seen “The Vagina Mologues” staged in many conservative parts of the world, from Pakistan to Alabama. Once in Oklahoma City, she performed for a group of women who were terrified to be watching her show. The next night, folks were bringing lawn chairs to the performance because the theater had sold out.
“I've never seen it not be embraced, never,” V said. “And I think when people hear something that reflects their truth, they rise above these kinds of divisions that have been often imposed on us.”
V added she’s happy that a smaller, more remote community like Grand Junction will get another chance to see this show. She urged people to go, even if they’re not sure it’s for them.
“Open your heart and open your mind just to see what happens,” she said. “Don't make a
A play that changes with the times
There have been criticisms of the Vagina Monologues. Some people think it’s too sexually permissive or not inclusive enough. For years, the play had no mention of transgender issues, but it now has a monologue for a transgender woman. Juliet Shakespear, 57, one of two local women sharing the role, was worried at first about trying out for the show.
“But they accepted us warmly, and it's just so much love, and it's so powerful,” she said. “It’s a very powerful group of women.”
Three Sisters insisted the role was played by two trans women — and would not have included it if trans actors hadn’t auditioned.
The other woman sharing the role is River Galven, 32, who added that she’s heard a lot of excitement around the community about the production. She said the media keeps telling people “there’s so much hate and division” in America.
“And it's not to say there isn't, but I think that it's over-exaggerated,” she said.
Like so many young people in the cast, Galven hadn’t heard of “The Vagina Monologues” before Three Sisters decided to bring it to town.
Others, like 59-old-year-old veteran actor Dee Covington, have seen the show in many iterations over the years.
Covington remembers the first time she watched it, “I thought it was really brave,” she said.
She still does, and felt it was finally time to “join the ranks” of the cast herself. Like so many of its pieces, her monologue is a mix of humor and grief. She plays an old woman who became so ashamed of her vagina that she basically decided to ignore its existence. Sitting in a chair, her character tells the audience she “hasn’t been ‘down there’ since 1953, and no, it had nothing to do with Eisenhower.”
There’s something for everyone to relate to in “The Vagina Monologues,” Covington said. She also believes there’s a lot that will make people uncomfortable.
But that’s part of the point.
She hopes that people can notice “when you’re about to close down or when you’re wincing,” she said. “If you can stay open to that, you can learn a lot about yourself.”f
And maybe that starts with just getting more comfortable with the word “vagina” itself. Director Jackman said someone taped over the word on a poster for the show hanging at a cast member's workplace.
It’s proof to Jackman of why this show — at this moment — is so important.
“The Vagina Monologues” plays at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 20-21, as well as 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22, at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Grand Valley.
Editor's note: This story was updated Feb. 20, 2026, to include comments from the play's creator.
