The critics in Holland loved it, and so did many immigrants, but a small group of people in the Muslim community were not amused. The play’s premiere was nearly canceled due to a bomb scare, and one theater in Amsterdam removed a poster of a woman wearing a transparent black veil after receiving threats. After the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist, several shows required extra security. We’ll find out how Americans (and Muslim-Americans) react to “The Veiled Monologues” next week, when the play opens at the St. Ann’s Warehouse Theater in Brooklyn.
Roosen’s monologues are indeed taboo-breaking, if not downright shocking. There is a tale of incestuous sex with cousins and uncles. There is a woman who refers to her vagina as “my zebra.” Strawberry bubblegum is used to illustrate a detailed discourse on the hymen. And the play is crammed with wisecracks, such as “Until you marry, your vagina is your parents’ property, so that your husband will receive it as a closed box.” When audiences ask Roosen what they can learn from “The Veiled Monologues,” she often quotes one of the women she interviewed, who said, “You Western women no longer want to be treated as women. You have been emancipated without bringing along your uterus.” Take that, ladies of America.
Yet Roosen, who was raised in a strict Roman Catholic family, is in it not only to break taboos. Her aim, she says, is much loftier: to fight the stereotype of the suppressed Muslim woman. “In private,” she says, “Muslim women are very candid and sensual when discussing intimate matters. They totally lack the puritanism of American women. Muslim women have retained the art of seduction. They enjoy sex just like they enjoy good food.” That is why Roosen has also exported her play to several Muslim countries. In Ankara “The Veiled Monologues” was performed in Turkish. In Jordan and Egypt, Roosen held closed readings of the script, because public staging was deemed improper. In Nigeria she helped a group of women write their own monologues, which will be staged soon. Next year she plans to bring her work to Pakistan.
“In spite of all the recent tension, the Dutch are still good at self-reflection, and we have the courage to engage in a dialogue,” says Roosen. “In the United States there is still a kind of smoke-’em-out mentality when it comes to people they don’t understand. In New York City we’ll be doing a dialogue between the West and the Arabic world. I’m really proud of that.”
