The Good Body

Written in 2004, The Good Body is a four-woman play that follows a similar format as Ensler’s Obie Award winning The Vagina Monologues, but with more personal interaction between characters. Rather than presenting the difficult topic of women’s body issues in the powerful, singular platform of a series of provocative monologues, The Good Body draws its strength through a more intimate, personal discussion between women and the bodies they struggle to inhabit. As Ensler says of the play, “The Good Body began with me and my particular obsession with my ‘imperfect’ stomach.”

Through the careful development of a seemingly superficial premise, Ensler delivers a thoughtful, personal, and self-reflective work that may have begun with Ensler’s stomach, but kaleidoscopes out into colorful, funny, and difficult dialogue between Ensler and women from Los Angeles to Afghanistan, facing their own bodily demons in ways that vary from drastic surgery to sneaking ice cream, and ends with a quiet invitation to acknowledge and embrace “the good body” in us all.