Hannah Jones/Winonan

Winona State University senior Kara Eggers recently had the chance to meet with Eve Ensler, a feminist writer and an activist for women’s rights.

Eggers was making preparations to direct Ensler’s play, “The Good Body”, a piece on the difficulties women face loving and accepting their own bodies. During their meeting, Ensler discussed the work she was currently involved in: getting adequate funding for medical equipment for a community center in the Congo, where victims of demoralizing rape tactics go to find shelter and aid.

Ensler’s guest, a representative from the shelter in the Congo, prompted the playwrite to confess that in comparison, she wasn’t doing enough with her life. Eggers shook her head remembering the meeting, for a moment, at a loss for words.

“I’m not doing enough with my life,” she concluded.

For one supposedly not doing enough, Eggers had been running from one end of campus to the other making ready for the performance. Constantly on her phone or checking email or both, Eggers didn’t look nearly as idle as she claimed to be.

She chose “The Good Body” after reading it through a single time and loving it instantly. The play shares a lot in common with “The Vagina Monologues”, also by Eve Ensler.

Ensler herself is a character in “The Good Body”, desperately trying to reconcile with her looks by hearing the stories of other women’s bodies. From fat to spreading, from naturally big-breasted to surgically altered beyond recognition, from bellies to Botox, the stories meld together into one overarching message: love your body, simply because it is your body, and not anybody else’s.

Throughout the play, the character Ensler is distracted and exhausted trying to improve her looks and lose her stomach, but as the character and the author herself attest, there is simply more she could be doing with her time and effort. “The Good Body” tells us that our bodies are naturally the way they are, and by fixating on them and consuming ourselves with attempts to improve them, we waste our hours and our energy; hours that could be spent focused, driven, full.

Saturday, Sept. 29 was the final day of the performance. All was set to go until one of the leading actresses, Abby Olsen, fell violently ill with a kidney cist rupture before the show. Having spent four months in and out of rehearsal, making arrangements, losing sweat and sleep leading up to this performance, Eggers was left with only two of her three cast members, and only three options: 1.) Cut out Olsen’s part 2.) Read the part herself and 3.) Cancel the show.

“I didn’t want to go onstage,” Kara admitted later. “I didn’t pick [“The Good Body”] because I wanted to perform it. I picked it because I wanted to mold how it would be portrayed.” Nonetheless, matter-of-factly, she picked up a script and went onstage with the actors she had been directing for weeks, reading Olsen’s role; no hesitation, no lamenting. “You hear it, you say ‘okay,’ and you immediately have to devise a plan,” she said later.

The play ran nearly without a hitch. The two other actresses, Lori Eschweiler and Molly Daun, played their parts as if they always had with their director reading from a small packet beside them. Eggers read the role as if she had intended to from day one, glancing down every now and then to catch a line, playing the part with finesse and nuance in spite of being confined to a script.

“If you F-up, own it,” she had told the actresses. And they did, the three of them. Sharing stories about accepting, loving, and yes, owning their own bodies, the three women put on a stirring performance that received a standing ovation.

“I just wish that people could have had the experience of seeing Abby onstage,” Kara said. “But these are uncontrollable situations.”

When it comes to our limited time on earth, wastefulness simply cannot be afforded. When there are people in the Congo being raped and left for dead, when there are people in our own community too terrified of getting fat to eat, there is work that needs to be done. After the show, Eggers was smiling, accepting praise and hugs from friends and audience members, for the time being satisfied with her work. Eggers plans to take part in aiding the Congo after she graduates, helping demoralized women love their bodies and themselves through therapeutic theater programs.

…I’m not doing enough with my life.

Contact Hannah at [email protected]