Do all women secretly like talking about their vaginas?

Students will get the opportunity to find out the answer to this question tonight, when Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues premieres at the HUB Auditorium.

The show features a series of skits varying in topics from sexual abuse, a girl’s first period and wearing short skirts. It was created in 1998 and spawned V-Day, a movement to stop violence against women and girls, according to the organization’s Web site.

The annual UW performance is sponsored by ASUW Women’s Action Commission and Voices for Planned Parenthood. All proceeds go to Home Alive, an anti-violence nonprofit organization that offers affordable self-defense classes in Seattle.

This year’s performance will be unique, as Director Melissa Aar, a senior in communication and comparative literature, changed the order of the monologues, creating a completely different show.

“The set is pretty bare and costumes are clothes that the actors have in their closets,” Aar said. “It doesn’t need to be elaborate and we didn’t want to distract from the message.”

About 20 girls auditioned but only 11 were cast, as opposed to the 30 cast members from last year, Aar said.

At the auditions, Aar said she looked for people who were willing to talk openly and candidly about their experiences, because the monologues are based on personal stories. The actors were asked to discuss topics such as how they were raised, birth control and shaving “down there.”

The cast is smaller than past years, but features a diverse group of students from different backgrounds.

“The director wanted women from all walks of life [and] all majors, which makes it unique because it’s real women,” said sophomore Kristy Hogue, an actor in the show.

Hogue was not turned away due to her lack of acting experience.

“I auditioned because I feel like The Vagina Monologues is something that … a woman who feels empowered by her sexuality should do because there are women out there who don’t feel that way and the message needs to get out there to everyone,” she said.

Aar has had experience acting, but this is her debut as a director. She said the small cast made it easy to collaborate and generate ideas with the actors.

“I’m a woman and they are women and that’s really all the experience that we need,” she said.

Although men and women participate in V-Day campaigns, the only male involved in the show is on the tech crew. The auditions were open to transgender or two spirit persons, but only women can be onstage, according to V-Day rules.

“The stories are from real women to begin with, and it’s about delivering it from the heart and not acting,” Hogue said.

[Reach reporter Sonia McBride at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]