The Saturday interview: Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler

The Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler shot to fame. Now it is a global activist who plans to appeal a billion women on strike against rape

Who could have predicted what is an effect of a group of women would talk about vaginas. Fifteen years ago, Eve Ensler, playwright, and New York with moderate success, opened the game was written for two years, The Vagina Monologues. According to the interviews I had done more than 200 women, resulting monologues - delivered over the years by actors like Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon and Oprah Winfrey - said the experiences of women. Sexuality, abuse, love, birth

But Eve Ensler did not stop there. Encouraged by the success of the work - and the stories that women would be to extend its performance later - two years later created the V-Day. Mission: to end violence against women. Now the fundraising of the book is organized around the world, and the movement has raised $ 85 million to fund women's projects, including an ambitious center, Congo, officially the worst place for a woman to support women who were raped. Could have predicted its longevity and influence? "It was a wonderful mystery to me," he said with a smile.

We meet at the bar is always full of hotels in London Ensler. Those who respond to their comments always charisma megawatts - "is not simply connect to the day," said Glenn Close, which took place in the program once, "You are part of his cross" - but it is less colorful, less noisy involved.

For years, she had an elegant and recognizable night trembling, his eyes that made the comic rogue, warrior of the head protection, but lost after chemotherapy the last year after her diagnosis of uterine cancer. These days your hair is very short. We ended up sitting on chairs strangely large, which means that none of us can touch the ground.

There is something childlike Ensler, who is 58. Despite the horror stories of the lives of other women who have spent the absorption - and their own struggles - which seems uncynical. As angry against injustice than ever, but not spent.

The Vagina Monologues is beginning to look a little tired in this country, it is easy to forget the impact that has not yet elsewhere. "This week, Qatar has signed and will not be women in Qatar rising to do and risk their lives to do that," says Eve Ensler. "I've seen time and again, this desire to break taboos, secret words, silences open -. I just found that is very powerful and inspiring "

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Ensler, I'm an emotional creature, is based on the stories of adolescents. When two years ago in the first, V-Girls launched specifically to engage girls and young women. "They do not know what is meant by" feminism "of speech, but their desires are -. feminists want to be free, safe, have opportunities and leadership roles The trick is to find the girls speak the language and support instead of saying "This is an ideology that has lasted for years, we all need of help. "I am a feminist, I grew up with feminism, but I also think that there is a way we have to change things so that we push more and in other directions."

Ensler has other things that I am an emotional creature is the way men were willing to participate. He told a friend (male) who said: "The men have daughters, they feel they can actively participate as they feel they can do something to change the destiny of life for their daughters . "Now there is a movement V-Men," a group of men around the world who take the lead and say, "Ending violence against women and girls means something to me. . "It's really exciting that men are less active allies, we will never end violence against women and girls Most violence against women by men is done we will not violate -. - unless the men engage in this fight and make it a primary concern, I do not see how we can stop this. "

This approach is not their beloved among radical feminists, but then Ensler has divided feminists since. Germaine Greer, who appeared in a British production of The Vagina Monologues, described as "very hyped and fundamentally boring piece of the ring-crazy American." Camille Paglia attacked Ensler, writing that it represented a "branch fashioned painful past of feminism" in one piece, describing it as a "charlatan and sectarian fever" in another. About Greer, smiled and Ensler said he "felt sad, but it is entitled to feel what you feel. There is much to say that I have great respect. The older you get, the more one realizes that all the world has some way of looking at things that have to respond. "

• Ensler grew up in a suburb of New York. His father was an executive in the company of food, his mother stayed at home. In his 2007 book Unsafe at last, written partly in response to the American obsession with "security" after 9 / 11, but as a memory, said the ideal of being an illusion. The reality was that his father physically and sexually abused her.

"I never imagined life of 30 years, and I'm pretty sure it does not come," he wrote. In his twenties, he was addicted to drugs and alcohol, cleaning, he met and married her husband and took her teenage son. In the following years, he worked as an activist for homeless women and anti-nuclear movement, and wrote plays that had some success in New York. Then came The Vagina Monologues. He took his prize money, fame, celebrity supporters - and most important, he said, access to power and a platform

earlier this year, opened Ensler City of Joy, a center that rehabilitates rape survivors in Congo. Stories that have left women in this small central African country are unimaginable - women tied to trees and gangraped in the week, women raped with sticks and bottles, including firearms, women and children whose parents were forced under threat of rape. The center is now home to 40 women who have advice, learn English and computer literacy are practiced communicators and effective leaders. "This is the happiest place I've ever been in my life," said Eve Ensler. "In the worst case, this is not the city grew, and I truly believe that these women will be the future of the Congo. The Congo was a turning point in my life. I had been to many places which women suffer, but the Congo was really shocking. "Since the end of violence? She nods. "And to think that in this century, all women would be treated this way with the knowledge of the world was unbearable."

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