Pussy Power

Chrissie Tiller, the co-producer of V-Day, talks about how disillusioned she became in the early days. 'People couldn't understand the concept. Lots of agents would make excuses about availability. The companies we approached would be initially excited, but when they got to board level they would back out saying they just couldn't take it on. It was the vagina word. They couldn't go there,' she says.

Even in America, where high profile actresses such as Meryl Streep and Whoopi Goldberg have championed the event, V-Day was treated with much initial unease. One television station tried to produce a show about The Vagina Monologues without once using the word 'vagina'.

Tamsin Larby, who also produces V-Day, says they were unable to raise any serious sponsorship the first time around. 'You would say the word 'vagina' and there would be this long silence. They would ask you to repeat it, even spell it, because they couldn't believe their ears. Maureen Lipman, who has been in the show, couldn't quite face telling her mother that she was performing in The Vagina Monologues, so it became the Angina Chronicles instead!'

It was not only the subject matter that worried people, it was also the play's connections with charities that support women experiencing violence. In the last three years V-Day has donated millions of dollars to organisations committed to stopping violence against women. The first V-Day UK took place in 1999 at the Old Vic in London with a celebrity cast of actors including Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Meera Syall and Melanie Griffith. It raised over £75,000.

'We had a huge struggle to put the play on and to get any coverage', says Larby. 'There is a huge social stigma attached to domestic violence, despite the fact that it is something that happens right across the board - it is not specific to class or race.'

Recent UN statistics show that one in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in their lifetime. For Davina James-Hanman, director of the Greater London Domestic Violence Project and one of the beneficiaries of V-Day, the arts have a real role to play in raising awareness, overcoming taboos and communicating the truth about violence.

'The more we raise awareness and understanding of the issues the better, because the lack of intervention and the social tolerance that exists around violence against women is one of the major reasons for its continuance.' She adds, 'A performance of The Vagina Monologues gives women who are experiencing violence a convenient hook to raise the topic in a neutral way with friends and relatives. They can gauge what the response might be were they to tell the reality of their own lives.'